ProPublica returns $1.6 million received from Sam Bankman-Fried's foundation

FTX filed for bankruptcy protection in the US last month after Binance abandoned its proposed takeover. Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder of FTX, promptly stepped down as CEO. The collapse of FTX ripples through the entire crypto world. Investors are more skeptical and anxious about cryptocurrencies than ever before. Many sophisticated crypto exchanges, like Binance, are bracing for a hit from the FTX. Some of them are suffering from the FUD effect.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday at the request of US prosecutors, Some reports said that he was due to testify before Congress about the sudden collapse of one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges last month.

As FTX filed for bankruptcy, billions of dollars went missing. The money had previously belonged to millions of FTX creditors. Thus, SBF will inevitably face a series of lawsuits after the extradition to the United States.

According to Reuters, ProPublica, a non-profit investigative news outlet, will return the $1.6 million it received from the family foundation of Sam Bankman-Fried.

the funds will be moved to an independent account temporarily until the SBF verdict has been settled. The legal authority can decide where the money should be returned.

ProPublica claimed that it has already terminated the partnership with the family foundation of Sam Bankman-Fried.

It's not clear to us what this case has to do with the missing $1 billion of FTX client money, but the crisis at FTX came after SBF secretly transferred $10 billion of FTX client money to Alameda Research, his proprietary trading firm. According to the report, at least $1 billion of client money disappeared.

In a series of interviews and public appearances in late November and December, Bankman-fried admitted to risk management failures but sought to distance himself from the fraud allegations, saying he had never knowingly mixed FTX client money with Alameda's.