The Bahamas ordered Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, to be extradited to New York to face fraud charges.
According to Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder, Bankman-Fried waived his right to appeal the extradition.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a separate statement that Minister Frederick Mitchell had signed a warrant for Bankman-surrender Fried’s to US authorities under a bilateral extradition treaty.
He was expected to depart the Bahamas late Wednesday, according to local news station Eyewitness News.
The decision came nine days after the former Bitcoin wunderkind was arrested at his fancy Nassau residence on a US warrant.
Just weeks before, his three-year-old Bahamas-based virtual currency corporation FTX and sibling trading institution Alameda Research declared bankruptcy, dissolving a business valued at $32 billion by the market.
On December 13, federal prosecutors in New York announced an eight-count indictment against him, including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and election financing violations.
They said that the 30-year-old defrauded FTX investors and misappropriated monies belonging to FTX and Alameda Research customers.
Bankman-Fried “was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire,” US prosecutors said.
Separately, the SEC charged him with securities fraud.
Bankman-Fried, a permanent resident of the Bahamas, had spent the previous nine days in Nassau’s Fox Hill prison pondering his options before announcing a Nassau magistrate court on Wednesday that he would not fight extradition.
There was no word on when he will arrive in New York and appear in court.
According to US media, his attorneys were attempting to negotiate his release on bail with US judicial authorities.
