Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was remanded in detention in the Bahamas on Tuesday as he battles extradition to the US over allegations of wire and securities fraud. Here’s some of the photos from the inside of Sam Bankman-Fried’s prison.
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Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced crypto titan, will be placed in custody in the Bahamas at a facility that was characterized in 2019 as ‘not being fit for humanity.’
On Tuesday, a judge in Nassau ruled that the FTX founder be jailed without bail while he battles extradition to the United States on a variety of charges which involve securities and wire fraud.
SBF, 30, contended that he ought to be offered $250,000 bail and house arrest due to his veganism, depression, and medicine dependency.
Instead, prior to his next court session on February 8, Chief Magistrate Joyann Ferguson-Pratt mandated that SBF serve the subsequent two months at the notorious Fox Hill prison in the Bahamas, which is renowned for its rodent infestations, violence, and the mixing of juvenile and adult offenders.
Watch the video below:
Although it was built to house 1,200 convicts, there are typically 2,400 prisoners housed there.
Romona Farquarhson, a lawyer in the Bahamas, said in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com that it is “very likely” that SBF will be granted a hearing in the Bahamas Supreme Court, where he may still be granted bail before February 8.
Farquarhson indicated that SBF would most likely be housed in the remand facility rather than the general population at Fox Hill.
Farquarhson stated: “I think they’ve got to be careful not to have him in really rough areas in the prison” in a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal.
A US State Department investigation into the prison revealed that rats and maggots were rife there, and that inmates were only permitted outside of their cells for 30 minutes a week owing to staffing shortages.
One section of the study reads: ‘Many cells also lacked running water, and in those cells, inmates removed human waste by bucket.’
It continued: ‘Sanitation was a general problem, with cells infested with rats, maggots and insects. Ventilation was also a general problem. Prisoners in maximum security had access to sanitary facilities only one hour a day and used slop buckets as toilets.’
Another section said: ‘Prison inmates complained about the lack of beds and bedding. As a result, inmates developed bedsores from lying on the bare ground.’
In contrast, a study conducted in the past rated the institution as “harsh” and “primitive”. The prison has seven housing units in all, including female, central intake, and maximum security.
Minors and adult inmates share cells throughout the institution.
According to a different Amnesty International assessment (read below) from 2021, inmates in Fox Hill were compelled to slop out since they had no access to restrooms. Since there is “virtually no” mental health care for prisoners, suicides are frequent.
The study reads: ‘There have been repeated, unconfirmed, serious allegations of sexual abuse and rape which do not appear to have been adequately investigated by the authorities.’
An unnamed prison officer told the Nassau Guardian in a 2019 interview: ‘Dogs don’t deserve to live in the state that maximum security is in. There’s no ventilation. Boy, you don’t even know. Did you know that rats run up and down all day, every day? It’s not fit for humanity.’
The officer continued by saying that since violence is so common, detainees hardly ever leave their cells to take a shower.
In 2015, Matthew Sewell, a former Fox Hill prisoner who had been wrongfully incarcerated on allegations of sexual assault, spoke to the Jamaican Gleaner: ‘I was beaten and stabbed several times, and had to fight to stay alive.’
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Speaking about spending time in solitary confinement, Sewell said: ‘The only movements I could feel in that cell was rats crawling over my body.’ While Sewell said that he developed a chronic skin disease due to exposure to rodents.
He added: ‘Fox Hill is a very dangerous prison. I was treated like a dog and placed on the condemned block with hardened criminals. It was only through the grace of God that I survived.’
A Bahamian pastor who had been found guilty of rape in the US pleaded with a judge in his native country to send him back to serve out his 20-year sentence.
While being tried in Georgia, the pastor, Don Martin, escaped and fled to the Bahamas. He was taken into custody by Nassau officials and lodged in Fox Hill prison, however he sought release.
When a judge told him that he would be extradited, Martin said: ‘Thank you. I have been threatened by gangs. Fox Hill ain’t no place to nobody to stay in. I am ready to go,’ according to the Tribune News Network.
According to a 2020 research by the Inter-American Development Bank, 65 percent of Fox Hill convicts said that it was simpler to obtain narcotics within the jail than it was outside.
Sam Bankman-Fried is charged with defrauding investors of $1.8 billion by misrepresenting the safety of his trading platform FTX. He has been hiding out in the Bahamas for weeks, but today prosecutors claimed in court that he was a flight risk, and as a result, bail was denied.
They asserted that in September, months before his cryptocurrency trading platform collapsed, he stored $300 million in a Brazilian fund to position himself for a getaway when the inevitable occurred.
According to the prosecution, he exploited the platform as a “personal piggy bank” to finance a luxurious lifestyle and large political donations.
In the meantime, Sam Bankman-Fried will face further charges, US Attorney Damian Williams announced to the media on Tuesday during a news conference.
Williams said: ‘It’s so hard to compare these things but…this is one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.’
Read the document below:
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