Ryan Pinder, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs for The Bahamas, said in a national address on Monday that the Securities Commission acted “quickly” in response to the FTX collapse and that the country is in the “early stages of an active and ongoing investigation”. The beleaguered exchange was headquartered in the Caribbean nation due to its favorable regulatory environment.
He added that “any attempt to lay the entirety of this debacle at the feet of The Bahamas, because FTX is headquartered here, would be a gross oversimplification of reality”.
Pinder was eager to distinguish FTX from Alameda Research, a separate entity owned by FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried that also filed for bankruptcy, saying that the latter was not headquartered in The Bahamas.
“No other jurisdiction in the world moved or could have moved this quickly in circumstances such as these.”
Ryan Pinder, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, The Bahamas
On November 10, one day after Binance pulled out of a deal to acquire FTX, the Security Commission of The Bahamas announced that it had taken action to freeze the assets of FTX. Pinder called the speed with which the Commission decided to act as “remarkable by any standard … no other jurisdiction in the world moved or could have moved this quickly in circumstances such as these”.
The exchange’s collapse was sudden and momentous. At its height, the company was valued at $32bn.
Crypto enthusiasts have reportedly gone on the lookout for Sam Bankman-Fried – referred to as SBF on social media – in The Bahamas. Ben Armstrong, a crypto influencer known as BitBoy with one million followers on Twitter and 1.45 million on YouTube, took on the role of citizen journalist, calling out government corruption in The Bahamas and the hiding of assets in the form of property on the island.
At least 19 properties worth around $121m were reportedly purchased under FTX’s name and the names of Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents and senior-level executives, Cointelegraph reported.
Pinder defended the country’s regulatory environment, saying he was “shocked at the ignorance of those who assert that FTX came to The Bahamas because they did not want to submit to regulatory scrutiny”.