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Changpeng Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance, waves as he arrives on stage for a panel session on the second day at the VivaTech Conference in Paris, June 16, 2022. PARIS — Days before French police visited Binance's Paris office, the crypto exchange's top French executive dismissed concerns about U.S. regulatory charges affecting Binance's other operations, comparing them with the flapping of a butterfly's wings. Just days before the raid, CNBC asked Binance France President David Prinçay if he was concerned about charges from the top two U.S. financial regulators against the exchange. Binance's founder, Zhao, dismissed the police statement and reporting as "FUD," claiming it was a "surprise on-site" inspection that was "the norm." Binance faces over a dozen charges from the SEC and a similar slate of allegations from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Persons: Changpeng Zhao, Le Monde, Binance, David Prinçay, Prinçay, Changpeng Zhao's, Binance France's, Zhao Organizations: VivaTech Conference, Le, CNBC, U.S . Securities, Exchange Commission, SEC, Futures Trading Commission, of Justice Locations: Paris, PARIS, Binance's Paris, U.S, Europe, French, European

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried paid out tens of millions of dollars worth of bribes to at least one Chinese government official, federal prosecutors alleged in a new indictment Tuesday. The indictment said accounts belonging to Bankman-Fried's hedge fund, Alameda Research, were the target of a freezing order from Chinese police "in or around" November 2021. Bankman-Fried and his associates considered and tried "numerous methods" to unfreeze the accounts, which contained around $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency, prosecutors allege. Ultimately, after both legal and personal efforts failed, Bankman-Fried agreed to and directed a multimillion-dollar bribe to have the frozen accounts unlocked, prosecutors alleged. Bankman-Fried now faces a federal indictment and civil charges from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Lindsay Lohan attends/performs during a photocall for "Speed The Plow" at Playhouse Theatre on September 30, 2014 in London, England. The Securities and Exchange Commission has unveiled fraud and unregistered securities charges against crypto founder and Grenadian diplomat Justin Sun, alongside separate violations against the celebrity backers of his Tronix and BitTorrent crypto assets, which included Jake Paul, Lindsay Lohan and Soulja Boy. The unregistered offer and sale charges, on the other hand, are similar to charges the SEC has unveiled against other crypto offerings and exchanges, including Genesis, Gemini and Do Kwon's Terraform Labs. “This case demonstrates again the high risk investors face when crypto asset securities are offered and sold without proper disclosure,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. Tron and his backers' alleged behavior was part of an "age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors," SEC enforcement chief Gurbir Grewal said in a statement.

The board of directors of Robinhood has approved a plan to buy up to 55 million shares bought by Sam Bankman-Fried last year. The ex-CEO of the now bankrupt crypto exchange FTX originally purchased his stake in May 2022 through Emergent Fidelity Technologies. "Our board authorized us to buy the shares of Robinhood that were originally acquired by Emergent Fidelity Technologies, that FTX subsidiary," Robinhood CFO Jason Warnick told CNBC. According to a Jan. 20 DOJ filing, Bankman-Fried held 55,273,469 Robinhood shares, over 7% of the company's outstanding shares. The shares are also at the heart of a contentious court battle between FTX, Bankman-Fried, crypto lender BlockFi, and a set of international entities.

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, will suspend U.S. dollar deposits and withdrawals, the company said Monday, without providing a reason for the decision. "We are temporarily suspending USD bank transfers as of February 8th," a Binance spokesperson told CNBC. The company said "0.01% of our monthly active users leverage USD bank transfers," and added that "we are working hard to restart service as soon as possible." Binance's net U.S. dollar outflow was over $172 million for the day, based on data from DefiLlama. That represents a tiny amount of money for a company that has $42.2 billion worth of crypto assets, according to Arkham.

Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss (L-R), co-founders of crypto exchange Gemini, on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention in Miami, Florida. Crypto exchange Gemini will reduce its headcount by 10%, a spokesperson told CNBC on Monday. Other crypto firms like Crypto.com, Coinbase , Kraken, and Genesis have eliminated positions since Nov. 11, the day that Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy. Gemini has been embroiled in an intense spat with Silbert's Genesis Trading, a crypto lending firm that generated rich returns for Gemini clients through Gemini's high-yield lending product, known as Gemini Earn. Genesis filed for bankruptcy protection on Jan. 19.

Just weeks before crypto lender Genesis filed for bankruptcy, three former employees of the company had secured millions of dollars for a new crypto hedge fund, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC. Gemini, a crypto exchange and major Genesis client, accused Ballensweig of falsely reassuring Gemini in July that Genesis was financially stable. The ex-Genesis employees teamed up with Adam Guren from hedge fund Hunting Hill, Ballensweig said. Hunting Hill is a $718 million hedge fund, which launched in 2010 and moved into digital asset investing in 2020 with a crypto opportunities fund. Neither Hunting Hill nor Bessemer immediately responded to a request for comment.

FTX co-founder Gary Wang and former Alameda Research co-CEO Caroline Ellison both pleaded guilty to federal charges in the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a message Wednesday. Wang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Ellison pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The SEC alleges that both Ellison and Wang, in their respective roles at Alameda and FTX, abetted Bankman-Fried in allegedly defrauding FTX customers. Ellison, 28, and Wang, 29, become the second and third individuals to be charged in connection with FTX's multibillion-dollar collapse.

watch nowFTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sent back to a Bahamas jail Monday after a reported plan for him to waive his extradition to the U.S. stalled. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (C) is led away handcuffed by officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force at the Nassau, Bahamas, courthouse on December 19, 2022. The FTX founder arrived at Bahamian court in a convoy of police vehicles, heavily guarded, just after 10 a.m. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, is escorted inside of the Magistrate's Court in Nassau, Bahamas, on Monday, Dec. 19, 2022. WATCH: Why Sam Bankman-Fried may decide to drop his fight against being extradited to the U.S.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (2nd L) is led away handcuffed by officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau, Bahamas on December 13, 2022. Days before FTX's bankruptcy filing last month, co-CEO Ryan Salame told Bahamian authorities that founder Sam Bankman-Fried may have committed fraud by sending customer money from the crypto exchange to his other firm, Alameda Research. According to a filing on Wednesday tied to FTX's bankruptcy proceedings, Salame disclosed "possible mishandling of clients' assets" by Bankman-Fried. FTX declared bankruptcy on Nov. 11. Like Bankman-Fried, Salame was a significant political donor, donating $20 million to Republican causes.

The filing also alleges that customers "believed his lies" and believed the platform was secure — and subsequently sent billions of dollars to FTX. But from the start, the SEC claims, Bankman-Fried improperly diverted customer assets to his privately held crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research. The SEC said Bankman-Fried hid those actions from FTX's equity investors, including American investors, "from whom he sought to raise billions of dollars in additional funds." "He repeatedly cast FTX as an innovative and conservative trailblazer in the crypto markets," the complaint said. Neither the SEC nor Emmer were immediately available to provide further comment.

CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin reported that the charges against Bankman-Fried include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering. Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said the United States was "likely to request his extradition." "While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere," the statement said. The Bahamas and the United States have had an extradition treaty in place since the early 20th century, when the Bahamas was still under British control. Legal experts told CNBC that if the federal government pursues wire or bank fraud charges, Bankman-Fried could face life in prison without the possibility of supervised release.

The Bahamas has more than 700 islands and cays; remote workers and students can live on 16 of them, including Eleuthera (shown here). Sylvain Sonnet | The Image Bank | Getty ImagesBahamian lawyers say FTX executives Sam Bankman-Fried and Ryan Salame spent $256.3 million to buy and maintain 35 different properties across New Providence, Bahamas. watch nowIt is the first true look behind the curtain at FTX's mammoth real estate spending. Now, Bahamian regulators are fighting to get those assets back from FTX's U.S. leadership. In a Monday night filing, the Bahamian lawyers asked a U.S. judge to dismiss the Chapter 11 proceedings for FTX's property subsidiary.

CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin reported that the charges against Bankman-Fried include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering. Neither the Attorney General of the Bahamas nor the Royal Bahamas Police Force would confirm the nature of the charges against Bankman-Fried. "I didn't ever try to commit fraud," Bankman-Fried said. The CFTC and lawmakers have begun their probes into FTX and Bankman-Fried, who told Sorkin he was down to his last $100,000. Failed lender BlockFi sued Bankman-Fried in November, seeking unnamed collateral that the FTX founder provided for the crypto lending firm.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, during a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has agreed to testify before the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing about the crypto exchange's collapse on Tuesday, he said in a series of tweets Friday morning. There's been a lot of back and forth in Washington over whether lawmakers would have to subpoena Bankman-Fried, who said he would voluntarily testify since the committee "still thinks it would be useful." In his tweet thread, the disgraced former "darling" of crypto appeared to lay blame on Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao. Before Bankman-Fried agreed to testify, CNBC reported that Waters was not planning to subpoena the ex-billionaire.

Bankman-Fried could face a host of potential charges – civil and criminal – as well as private lawsuits from millions of FTX creditors, legal experts told CNBC. There are three different, possibly simultaneous legal threats that Bankman-Fried faces in the United States alone, Levin told CNBC. He told CNBC, "prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bankman-Fried or his associates committed criminal fraud." (Carter was not an FTX investor, and told CNBC that his fund passed on early FTX rounds.) "People should not jump to the conclusion that something is not happening just because it has not been publicly disclosed," Levin told CNBC.

John Ray, chief executive officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, arrives at bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022. It could be one way for the DOJ to gather evidence of alleged fraud. In a filing in Delaware federal bankruptcy court, Andrew Vara, a U.S. bankruptcy trustee, told the court that the allegations of corporate misconduct and complete failure merited an immediate and speedy examination of the events leading up to FTX's stunning collapse three weeks ago. It's not unusual to appoint a bankruptcy examiner. There was one to oversee the crypto bankruptcy process of Celsius Network, for example.

Hackers who stole around $477 million worth of cryptocurrency from collapsed exchange FTX have started to launder the funds into bitcoin . Blockchain analytics company Elliptic estimates that around $477 million worth of cryptocurrency had been stolen from FTX. The theft adds insult to injury to FTX, a once $32 billion crypto empire who collapse has sent shockwaves across the industry. Crypto compliance software company Chainalysis in a tweet on Sunday also confirmed that hackers are moving funds. The implosion of FTX has left Bankman-Fried a paper pauper and investors left unable to access their crypto assets.

Ray's statement came with a flurry of Saturday morning filings in Delaware bankruptcy court. In those filings, FTX asked for permission to pay outside vendors, consolidate bank accounts, and establish new ones. The new FTX CEO asked that employees, vendors, customers, regulators and government stakeholders "be patient" with them. FTX said in a filing that there could be more than one million creditors in these Chapter 11 cases. FTX's bank accounts reflect the global influence of the crypto-asset empire.

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