Police in the Bahamas have arrested the founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX after criminal charges were filed in the US.

Sam Bankman-Fried, who goes by the name SBF, was the head of the company at the time worth $47 billion before speculation FTX was insolvent, it led to a liquidity crisis that eventually brought down the stock market and created a contagion effect throughout the cryptocurrency world.

In a statement, Bahamian Attorney General Ryan Pinder said the country expects an extradition request soon.

“As a result of the notice received and the material provided with it, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF’s arrest and detain him under our country’s extradition law,” Pinder said.

“Once a formal request for extradition is made, the Bahamas intends to process it promptly, in accordance with Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States.”

Despite allegations that Bankman-Fried defrauded FTX’s customers, he has remained in the public eye through public appearances from the Bahamas, where his now-bankrupt company was headquartered.

Two weeks ago he appeared on one New York Times conference, where he said he was “not trying to cheat anyone”.

Last week, SBF agreed to appear before a US House of Representatives committee, tweeting that he saw himself “as a model CEO, who wouldn’t get lazy or disconnected.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Hopefully people can learn from the difference between who I was and who I could have been.”

The sudden collapse of FTX affected thousands of Australians holding money on the exchange, and created market conditions that recently led one of the country’s largest exchanges, Swyftx, to lay off a third of its staff.

FTX’s current CEO John Ray III – who is running the company during the bankruptcy – also oversaw Enron’s infamous bankruptcy.

In a pronunciation Ray said FTX was unique in the disarray of the company’s management.

“Never in my career have I seen such total failure of the company’s controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to the complete failure of any internal control or governance,” he said.

“The collapse of the FTX Group appears to have resulted from the absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of very inexperienced and inexperienced individuals who failed to implement virtually all systems or controls required for a business entrusted with other tasks. people’s money or property.”