(The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET. If the above video doesn't play at that time, please refresh the page.)
The House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday morning on the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX following the arrest of founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Monday night in the Bahamas.
The Department of Justice and authorities in the Bahamas said that Bankman-Fried, who was previously scheduled to testify before the panel, was arrested based on a sealed indictment in the US that was unsealed shortly after the hearing began. .
The US Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York indicted the disgraced crypto executive with eight criminal counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, individual counts of securities fraud and wire fraud, money laundering money and conspiracy to circumvent campaign finance regulations.
John J. Ray, the company's new CEO, is the panel's only witness. The company imploded and requested Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month after transferring billions of dollars in FTX client funds to Bankman-Fried's hedge fund Alameda Research.
The Securities and Exchange Commission also accused the former crypto "Dear" on Tuesday morning with allegedly "orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading," according to the agency.
Bankman-Fried had also been asked by the Senate Banking Committee to testify at a hearing on Wednesday that she previously refused to attend.
Before her company imploded, Bankman-Fried donated nearly $40 million to candidates, campaigns and political action committees in the 2022 midterm elections, with most of her publicly disclosed contributions going to Democrats. Ryan Salame, co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, donated another $23 million, with most of his contributions going to Republicans.
