Sam Bankman-Fried wins a small victory as prosecutors agree to withdraw 5 charges — but ask for a separate trial for these next year
- Sam Bankman-Fried was facing 13 criminal charges after the downfall of FTX.
- But prosecutors said Wednesday they would withdraw five of these.
Sam Bankman-Fried hasn't been having a great year, but he did win a small victory on Wednesday.
The FTX cofounder was facing 13 criminal charges, but in a court filing seen by Insider federal prosecutors said they would withdraw five of these for the October 2 trial.
That's because those accusations were only submitted after Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas, where his crypto exchange was headquartered.
Bankman-Fried was extradited to the US because of a treaty with the Bahamas. After spending nine days in a correctional center in Nassau that's known for its squalid conditions, the former billionaire is now under house arrest at his childhood home in Palo Alto, California.
The withdrawn charges include bank fraud — prosecutors said Bankman-Fried created a new company with no staff to get around FTX being rejected for a California bank account — and a bribery conspiracy charge alleging that he spent $40 million trying to influence at least one Chinese government official.
Earlier this week, SBF won a ruling in the Bahamas which gave him the ability to argue that its government shouldn't consent to those five newer charges, Bloomberg reported.
But it could take months for the Caribbean nation to decide whether or not to do so.
In their letter to the judge, federal prosecutors said the government is ready to proceed with fewer charges, "in light of the uncertainty concerning when The Bahamas will render a decision with respect to specialty, and to simplify the proof at trial and decrease the burden of trial preparation on the defendant."
It sounds like a good, if small, victory for the man currently out on $250 million bail. But these charges aren't going away — they're only being split from the others.
SBF's lawyers had asked for the charges to be dismissed. Prosecutors requested that the judge schedule a trial over them for the first quarter of next year.
Bankman-Fried's spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Insider.