Sam Bankman-Fried faces extradition from the Bahamas to the US: Here's how, legal experts explain

• FTX is reportedly facing investigations in the US and the Bahamas amid missing funds.
• Founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas Monday, at the request of the US government.

When Sam Bankman-Fried joined the DealBook interview two weeks ago in a video call apparently from the Bahamas, he sounded unsure about his travel plans.

He told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that he'd thought about whether he would head to the US, and potentially even speak with members of Congress, according to a transcript of the interview published in The New York Times.

Now, the choice might not be necessarily his. On Monday evening, Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian authorities, at the request of the US government.

"Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY," the US Attorney's Office Southern District of New York confirmed on Twitter. "We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time."

"The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law," the Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said in a statement.

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission also brought a civil suit against Bankman-Fried, alleging that he duped both the investors and customers of FTX. He'd always used FTX customer funds to make murky investments through Alameda Research, his other company, and to cultivate a certain image and lifestyle, according to the the agency's complaint, which was filed in federal court in New York.

"Customers around the world believed his lies, and sent billions of dollars to FTX, believing their assets were secure on the FTX trading platform," the SEC wrote in the complaint. But Bankman-Fried commandeered those assets for "undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases and large political donations," the agency wrote.

US government investigators, including prosecutors at the Department of Justice, have reportedly pursued multiple lines of inquiries into the crash of Bankman-Fried's crypto lending company. The charges in the sealed indictment are currently unclear.

Once the US government brings criminal charges against him, prosecutors have legal tools to extradite him to the US, legal experts told Insider.

"How common is extradition? It's incredibly common, it happens every day," said Jordi de Llano, a former federal prosecutor in Boston investigating financial crimes, who is now a partner at Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP.

The US government's power to investigate and extradite overseas defendants is governed by various international agreements, and honed through decades of prosecutions in drug cases involving defendants living outside the US, and in other types of cases involving white collar crimes.

It's how the US government, for instance, in 2016 secured the extradition of drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman from Mexico, and pursued the extradition of soccer officials in a wide-ranging corruption prosecution involving the FIFA organization.

When it is investigating targets living overseas, the DOJ relies on its international affairs office, which works with the US State Department to look into the specifics of treaties with the countries involved. Such agreements are often known as "mutual legal assistance treaties," or "MLats," in white collar prosecution parlance.

But prosecutors have several steps to clear before they seek an extradition. The process of bringing charges against a defendant in the first place is a fairly rigorous one that can often involve a grand jury.

A federal grand jury, which can comprise close to a couple dozen members, may consider whether the evidence prosecutors have presented meets the legal standard of "probable cause" — that is, if it is enough to show the likelihood that potential criminal actions took place — to justify bringing criminal charges. If the grand jury agrees that there are grounds to pursue charges, it leads to an official indictment. Prosecutors can then ask the court to issue an arrest warrant.

In cases involving defendants living abroad, that warrant can be passed along to enforcement authorities overseas, where it can help detain the target defendant while the US makes a formal extradition request, de Llano said.

Extradition processes are governed by treaties with foreign governments, including the Bahamas. They're designed to facilitate international investigations, and can require that the charges at issue be a crime in both jurisdictions. Charges like securities fraud and money laundering can typically meet those types of standards, experts said.

The US government's extradition treaty with the Bahamas allows the US to extradite defendants for charges involving offenses that would be considered crimes in both countries, and which could result in a jail sentence of longer than a year.

Extradition can be a lengthy process that takes place through diplomatic channels. The US would file its extradition application through the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs, which oversees those requests. The US would have to compile materials, like an explanation of the charges and legal provisions involved, sending it through the US State Department to the Bahamian government.

"You'd have to do a fair bit of work to get it done, but if you're right on the law, the proceeding doesn't really involve a trial on the facts," said Harry Sandick, a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, and a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. "It's no defense to extradition to say, 'I'm innocent.'"

In more extreme cases involving serious sentences like the death penalty, countries can also negotiate to hand over the defendant only if such a sentence is off the table.

"A nation can then go ahead and put conditions on it," said Fredric Lederer, a law professor at William & Mary Law School.

In this case, it's not likely that a potential securities fraud case would allow another nation to put terms on its extradition.

Insider contacted Bankman-Fried's last known attorneys for comment on this story; they didn't respond. Bankman-Fried also didn't respond.