After months of trying and failing to recover $1 billion in Alameda Research trading funds frozen by the Chinese government, Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly gave the order to send a $150 million bribe to government officials. Not all of his employees were on board.
The Chinese government had frozen Alameda's accounts at Chinese crypto exchanges OKX and Huobi (now HTX) as part of an investigation into money laundering, ex-CEO Caroline Ellison testified during FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial. The $1 billion was a substantial portion of Alameda’s trading capital at the time, and Bankmand-Fried quickly assembled a team to recover it that included Ellison, other high-level execs, and David Ma and Handi Yang, two Alameda employees with "connections to China."
