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Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

Why were the campaign finance violations and conspiracy to commit bribery charges separated from the first trial?

Seems like someone is protecting the other parties involved in those crimes.

I think this was actually more of a risk mitigation measure from the prosecution's side if memory serves -- this way if one case fell flat or something happened (you never know, maybe the judge rules some evidence can't be included or some weird technicality happens that skews the case towards the defendant) they would still have other charges to file to get a second attempt at prosecuting SBF.

From https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-30/ftx-founder-sam-bankm...

"He had been extradited in December 2022 from the Bahamas, where FTX was based, to face the seven earlier charges. The Bahamas has yet to grant its consent for a trial on the remaining charges, however, leaving the timetable uncertain, prosecutors said."

Sorry to burst the bubble of the conspiracy theorists.

Huh! Interesting that the extraditing country has that sort of right. Curious if that's a right or more of a courtesy/norm?

It makes perfect sense if you think about the opposite scenario.

US: We want you to extradite this guy for fraud.

Bahamas: No problem, he's all yours.

US: You are under arrest for murder; enjoy the electric chair.

Bahamas: Wait a minute!

Well the norm definitely makes sense, mostly because if you do that then other countries won't want to extradite folks to you. But I'm curious if that's actually a right. For example, you could imagine that you extradite the guy for fraud then find evidence that he also committed murder.

If you want to add charges you just have to re-extradite which should be no harder than the original extradition. It's not some kind of get out of jail free loophole.

Don't worry, I wasn't thinking it's some get out of jail free loophole :)

I'm not sure if the American prosecutors are legally bound to the agreed terms, but pragmatically, you want to respect the agreement for the sake of potential future extraditions. If you break the terms today, the Bahamas aren't going to go to war over that with you, but they may deny future extradition requests.

Yeah it totally makes sense. I'm wondering about the "I'm not sure if..." part of your comment though.

That in no way negates the possible existence of a conspiracy. Officials in the Bahamas may have received bribes and want to cover that up.

So the logical question now is: why did the Bahamas refuse to grant consent for a trial on those charges?

The campaign finance charge from the indictment is for directing donations through a third party to hide the source of the contributions. The evidence (Singh's testimony) was already presented in court.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/united-states-attorney-...

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