(Reuters) – U.S. federal prosecutors said late Wednesday that they would not immediately proceed with five charges of foreign bribery, bank fraud and conspiracy against indicted founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried.
The charges were not in Bankman-Fried’s initial eight-count indictment last December, which focused on the collapse of FTX, but were added after his extradition. FTX was based in the Bahamas.
A Bahamas court on Tuesday temporarily barred the country’s government from agreeing to let U.S. prosecutors pursue part of their criminal case against Bankman-Fried.
In the court filing on Wednesday, United States Attorney Damian Williams cited uncertainty around a decision from the Bahamas, and asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to schedule trial on these five counts for the first quarter of 2024.
Last month, U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan said they would drop the five charges against the one-time billionaire if the Caribbean nation did not agree to them.
He could spend decades in prison if convicted at a trial set to start on Oct. 2.
U.S. District Judge Kaplan is expected to hear arguments on Thursday.
(Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely)
