The charge of conspiracy to breach the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act raises to 13 the number of charges Sam Bankman faces

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was charged with directing $40mln in payoffs to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets relating to his crypto currency business in a newly rewritten indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The charge of conspiracy to breach the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act raises to 13 the number of charges SBF faces after he was apprehended in the Bahamas in December and brought to the US subsequently.

The indictment was returned on Monday. The charge also contains language disclosing that a fifth arrest was impending in what US Attorney Damian Williams has often described as an ongoing probe.

That unnamed person, as per the indictment, took part in the payoffs conspiracy with SBF and will be arrested in the Southern District of New York.

SBF is free on a $250mln personal bond and staying with his parents in Palo Alto, California.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on Tuesday barred SBF from communicating with current or former employees of FTX or Alameda Research, its affiliated crypto currency hedge fund trading firm.

The order also restricts SBF to one laptop and phone and prohibits him from encoded communications or other “smart” devices with access to the internet. The alleged payoffs came from the operation of Alameda Research.

According to the indictment, Chinese law enforcement agencies in early 2021 froze specific Alameda crypto currency trading accounts containing nearly $1bln in crypto currency on two of China’s biggest crypto currency exchanges.

SBF recognised that the accounts had been frozen by Chinese authorities as part of a continuing investigation of a specific Alameda trading counterparty, according to the indictment.

After SBF failed several attempts over a number of months to unfreeze the accounts via ways including using lawyers to lobby, SBF finally consented to direct a multimillion dollar payoff to try to unfreeze the accounts, the indictment stated.

A part of the crypto currency payoff, then worth nearly $40mln, was moved from Alameda’s main trading account to a private crypto currency wallet in November 2021 and the frozen accounts were unfrozen at around the same time, the indictment stated.

After SBF got confirmation that the accounts were unfrozen, he permitted the transfer of additional tens of millions of dollars in crypto currency to complete the bribe, as per the indictment.