Caroline Ellison, a close confidant of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, has revealed in court transcripts that FTX’s trading arm, Alameda Research, paid a bribe to the Chinese government to unfreeze $1 billion. Ellison, who is also the former CEO of Alameda, disclosed this information during questioning by United States Attorneys. She stated that Alameda’s accounts were frozen in a money laundering investigation, and Bankman-Fried sought ways to address the issue. Eventually, Alameda paid a bribe to Chinese government officials to unfreeze the funds. Ellison further explained that FTX executives David Ma and Constance Wang were able to communicate with the officials and discovered that the money could be unfrozen if $100 million was sent to certain crypto addresses. Bankman-Fried was previously charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly bribing Chinese officials with $40 million, which is significantly less than the amount mentioned by Ellison.

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Information	Details
Geography	Asia
Countries	🇨🇳
Sentiment	neutral
Relevance Score	0
People	Constance Wang, Caroline Ellison, David Ma, Sam Bankman-Fried
Companies	FTX, United States Attorneys (AUSA), Chinese government, Alameda Research, Inner City Press
Currencies	None
Securities	None