By Jared Higgs, Luc Cohen and Jasper Ward
NASSAU, Bahamas/NEW YORK (Reuters) – A defense lawyer for Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, told a magistrate judge in the Bahamas on Monday that the former billionaire wanted to see the indictment against him before agreeing to be extradited to the United States.
The statement came at a hearing in Nassau before Magistrate Shaka Serville, two hours after Bankman-Fried arrived in court dressed in a dark blue suit and carrying a manila folder containing papers.
Bankman-Fried initially had said he would fight extradition after his arrest a week ago in the Bahamas, where he lives and FTX is based. He was denied bail and remanded to the Caribbean nation’s Fox Hill prison.
A source had told Reuters on Saturday that Bankman-Fried would return to court to reverse his decision.
Federal prosecutors in New York said Bankman-Fried stole billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to plug losses at his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research. They accuse Bankman-Fried of misleading lenders and investors, conspiring to launder money and violating U.S. campaign finance laws.
Bankman-Fried’s defense lawyer initially told Serville that he did not know why Bankman-Fried was brought to court on Monday morning. Following a recess, the lawyer said that Bankman-Fried wanted to see the indictment before consenting to extradition.
Mark Cohen, a U.S. lawyer who represents Bankman-Fried, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and a spokesperson for Bankman-Fried also did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
The 30-year-old crypto mogul rode a boom in the value of bitcoin and other digital assets to become a billionaire several times over and an influential political donor in the United States, until FTX collapsed in early November after a wave of withdrawals. The exchange declared bankruptcy on Nov. 11.
Bankman-Fried has acknowledged risk management failures at FTX but said he does not believe he has criminal liability.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Jasper Ward in Washington; Additional reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Jared Higgs in Nassau; Editing by Amy Stevens, Megan Davies, Noeleen Walder, Nick Zieminski and Matthew Lewis)
