The former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency trade and exchange firm FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), has been arrested in the Bahamas. On Tuesday, he was expected to testify online before the US House Financial Services Committee. Damian Williams, The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), affirmed the arrest of SBF on Twitter. “Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY.”

The new CEO of FTX, John J. Ray III, said that in his entire career, he has never “seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

Sen Ryan Pinder KC, the Attorney general of The Bahamas, said in a statement that  “SBF’s arrest followed receipt of formal notification from the US that it has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition.”

Amidst the humdrum of collapsing one of the biggest crypto exchanges and its aftermath, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked publicly traded companies to disclose any involvement with the struggling crypto firms to their investors. 

Bankman-Fried secretly used customers’ funds of $10 billion to prop up his trading business. FTX was about to be merged with the leading crypto exchange Binance; the deal didn’t materialize as the crypto firm filed for bankruptcy on Nov 11. 

A day before SBF’s arrest, he was expected to appear online before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday.