Sam Bankman-Fried could solely need to face the unique fees introduced in opposition to him at his U.S. trial this yr after the Division of Justice stated it was keen to postpone attempting him on a number of extra counts.
The FTX founder was initially hit with eight legal fees by U.S. prosecutors in December, together with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit cash laundering.
He pleaded not responsible to the costs in January.
A superseding indictment in February then added a number of new fees, together with conspiracy to make illegal political contributions, whereas an extra cost in March accused him of bribing Chinese language officers.
In complete, the previous crypto icon was dealing with 13 fees from the DoJ.
However Bankman-Fried and his attorneys have argued that the later counts violate the extradition settlement between the U.S. and the Bahamas.
Prosecutors stated they’d solely transfer forward with the extra fees if the Bahamas permitted. This week, a courtroom within the Caribbean nation granted him the correct to hunt a judicial evaluate of the phrases of his extradition, with the post-extradition fees not in a position to be permitted till after this course of is full.
In a bid to maintain proceedings shifting alongside, prosecutors filed a letter to the New York courtroom dealing with the U.S. case in opposition to Bankman-Fried late final evening, saying they had been keen to quickly forgo the 5 extra fees to permit the trial for the primary batch to go forward.
U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams wrote that it appeared the litigation within the Bahamas “will take time” and might not be resolved in time for the scheduled October 2 trial.
Subsequently, the U.S. Authorities “is ready to proceed to trial as scheduled on the counts contained within the authentic Indictment”, he wrote. In doing so, the additional fees can be “severed.”
However he requested the decide to schedule a trial on these counts for the primary quarter of 2024, or the closest handy time afterward.
The October trial, subsequently, appears to be like set to go forward on the Manhattan courtroom, although it’s simply one of many authorized battles surrounding the FTX fallout. Whereas chapter proceedings are ongoing, there’s additionally a lawsuit focusing on FTX’s superstar promoters in addition to Bankman-Fried himself.
The Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee (CFTC) have each lined up their very own lawsuits in opposition to crypto’s former whizzkid.