Federal authorities on Tuesday charged FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried with using what they said was tens of millions of dollars of misappropriated customer funds to make illegal political donations to both Democratic and Republican candidates.Prosecutors said one of the reasons he made those contributions was to influence the direction of policies and laws affecting the cryptocurrency industry.Bankman-Fried diverted customer assets held by FTX, a major cryptocurrency exchange, to his separate crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged in a civil complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.He then used those funds to make “large political donations,” to make investments and buy “lavish real estate,” the SEC complaint alleged.Bankman-Fried “used Alameda as his personal piggy bank” for those purposes, the SEC said.A separate but related federal criminal indictment accuses Bankman-Fried and others of violating numerous federal campaign finance laws by, among other things, giving contributions of at least …
