Powerful and influential American being brought into the seedy underbelly of the CCP? Could this be another example of elite capture? Or was disgraced crypto bro Sam Bankman-Fried in way over his head? Sounds like a case for The Drill Down’s own Peter Schweizer.
According to a recently revealed report from The New York Post, Bankman-Fried paid $40 million dollars in bribes to at least one (possibly more) Chinese official to gain access to accounts that were frozen by Beijing; federal prosecutors broke the news on Tuesday.
“The feds allege the shaggy-haired accused fraudster sought to unlock $1 billion in cryptocurrency in accounts that had been seized by the authoritarian state,” NYP reports.
“Samuel Bankman-Fried aka ‘SBF’ authorized and directed a bribe of at least $40 million to one or more Chinese government officials,” the indictment states.
“The purpose of the bribe was to influence and induce one or more Chinese government officials to unfreeze certain Alameda trading accounts containing over $1 billion in cryptocurrency, which had been frozen by Chinese authorities,” it adds.
The bribe was ultimately successful and the accounts were unfrozen but much is still unknown about SBF’s relationship with the CCP and how deep the rabbit hole goes.
According to The Free Beacon, “Bankman-Fried had a history of using his companies as piggy banks to influence regulators. Bankman-Fried paid tens of millions of dollars to political candidates, largely Democrats, in order to ‘improve his personal standing in Washington, D.C.’ and ‘curry favor’ with candidates who could help pass legislation to help his companies. He used other executives at his companies to donate millions of dollars more to Republican candidates in order to build bipartisan support in Washington.”
The Beacon continues: “Bankman-Fried’s donations opened doors for him in Washington. He visited the White House four times last year, meeting with top aides to President Joe Biden in order to discuss regulation of the crypto industry. Bankman-Fried gave $5 million to a pro-Biden political action committee in 2020, and said in June 2022 that he might give another $1 billion to support Democrats in the midterms.”
But the latest CCP revelation creates a slew of new questions. For example, did he owe members of Chinese Intelligence any favors beyond the initial bribe? Was there a quid pro quo? How sympathetic is SBF to China’s oppressive regime and human rights abuses?
Lots we still don’t know.
