FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Pleads Not Guilty to Latest Bribery Charge

Christy Goldsmith Romero

Commissioner

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Explore the policy fallout from the 2022 market crash, the advance of CBDCs and more.

Christy Goldsmith Romero

Commissioner

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Explore the policy fallout from the 2022 market crash, the advance of CBDCs and more.

Cheyenne Ligon is a CoinDesk news reporter with a focus on crypto regulation and policy. She has no significant crypto holdings.

Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk’s managing editor for global policy and regulation. He owns marginal amounts of bitcoin and ether.

Christy Goldsmith Romero

Commissioner

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Explore the policy fallout from the 2022 market crash, the advance of CBDCs and more.

Christy Goldsmith Romero

Commissioner

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Explore the policy fallout from the 2022 market crash, the advance of CBDCs and more.

FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted bribery and campaign finance violations unveiled in two recent superseding indictments during a court appearance on Thursday.

Prosecutors unveiled the bribery charge on Tuesday, alleging Bankman-Fried tried using over $40 million in crypto to bribe at least one Chinese government official to unlock funds in accounts tied to Alameda Research, another of his companies.

The latest indictment came on top of a superseding indictment unveiled last month that added bank fraud charges and detailed the campaign finance allegations. Bankman-Fried was arrested last year in the Bahamas and extradited to the U.S., where he was released on bond. He is set to go to trial this fall.

Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Mark Cohen, told the court that while the defendant pleaded not guilty, he was not acknowledging the more recent sets of charges.

“My client is not acknowledging he can be tried,” Cohen said.

Reuters first reported the plea, after reporting earlier on Thursday that he was likely to plead not guilty to the charges.

Edited by Sheldon Reback.

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Cheyenne Ligon is a CoinDesk news reporter with a focus on crypto regulation and policy. She has no significant crypto holdings.

Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk’s managing editor for global policy and regulation. He owns marginal amounts of bitcoin and ether.

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Cheyenne Ligon is a CoinDesk news reporter with a focus on crypto regulation and policy. She has no significant crypto holdings.

Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk’s managing editor for global policy and regulation. He owns marginal amounts of bitcoin and ether.