The Street – Michael Zweiback on FTX Collapse: Bankman-Fried Wants to Avoid Arrest on U.S. Soil

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/cryptocurrency/ftx-collapse-bankman-fried-wants-to-avoid-arrest-on-us-soil

“He’s in the Bahamas because he doesn’t want to be arrested, which will happen the minute he sets foot on U.S. soil,” said White-collar criminal defense attorney Michael Zweiback, co-founder of Los Angeles-based Zweiback, Fiset & Zalduendo LLP. “This is why he has created an artificial environment, saying he’s cooperating but doing so through a computer screen. It’s a false, fictional world.” 

Zweiback indicated that the only way Bankman-Fried would return to U.S. soil is through an order of extradition in the Bahamas.

But he warned that that “would take 18 months to 3 years. The U.S. has to proceed in making the request, with the charges they’re going to proceed on were he to be prosecuted and tried in the U.S., so they can’t simply amend the indictment after he has an order of extradition.”