Sam Bankman-Fried’s plans to drop his fight against US extradition will get a hearing in a Bahamas court on Wednesday.
(Bloomberg) — Sam Bankman-Fried’s plans to drop his fight against US extradition will get a hearing in a Bahamas court on Wednesday.
An official for the Magistrate’s Court in Nassau told reporters that the tribunal would take up the matter at 11 a.m. local time on Wednesday. The hearing could result in the FTX co-founder being quickly sent to the US to face a range of criminal charges in connection with the collapse of the exchange.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, Jerone Roberts, appeared at the court on Tuesday, but declined to answer reporters’ questions as he left.
Authorities have been probing Bankman-Fried’s role in the spectacular collapse of crypto exchange FTX, which was headquartered in the Bahamas. The 30-year-old has been behind bars for more than a week after local police arrested him at the request of American authorities.
Bankman-Fried was denied bail at an initial court hearing last week and is being held in a notorious correctional facility on the outskirts of Nassau known as Fox Hill. At a chaotic Monday hearing a judge ordered him returned to the facility. It wasn’t immediately clear if Bankman-Fried would be present at Wednesday’s proceedings.
Although he initially said that he would fight extradition, Bankman-Fried has more recently indicated in private conversations that he was preparing to return to the US as soon as Monday, Bloomberg News has reported. The change in attitude was in part tied to the expectation that he’ll be able to get bail in the US.
Roberts told local media on Monday that Bankman-Fried wouldn’t fight extradition and could be back in court again this week.
(Updates with details on Wednesday hearing starting in lede.)
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