United States prosecutors have sought court approval to seize cryptocurrency linked to alleged bribes paid to Chinese officials by Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX. A recent petition filed in a New York federal court claims that a Binance account, initially valued at about $8.6 million in December 2023 but now worth approximately $18.5 million, was utilized for laundering bribe funds before FTX's collapse in late 2022. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried paid a $40 million bribe to unfreeze $1 billion in crypto held in Chinese exchanges. Following the unfreezing, additional bribe payments in cryptocurrency were allegedly authorized by him. The account in question was set up just days before the filing and is said to have a complex structure of incoming and outgoing cryptocurrency transactions. Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the account's seizure during Bankman-Fried’s trial, where he was ultimately sentenced to 25 years in prison. Several other charges related to foreign bribery were dismissed during the trial.

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