Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of failed crypto firm FTH, has been accused of bribing at least one Chinese official. He is accused of approving bribes of "at least $40 million" to try to gain access to trading accounts frozen by Chinese authorities. BBC.

The charges are in addition to the fraud case filed last year after the collapse of FTH. Bankman-Fried previously pleaded not guilty. He is currently under house arrest at his parents' house in California, where he awaits trial. The updated indictment alleges that Bankman-Fried authorized the bribe after Chinese authorities froze accounts containing about $1 billion in cryptocurrencies belonging to his Alameda Research firm.

The alleged bribery followed months of attempts to access the funds, which Bankman-Fried believed had been frozen as part of an investigation into another trading firm. All this was happening before FTH's dramatic collapse last year, when reports about the company's finances led to a flurry of withdrawals, pushing the company into bankruptcy.

After the collapse, which left many people unable to access their funds, criminal charges were filed against Bankman-Fried. He is accused of improperly using customer deposits at FTH to finance his other company, Alameda Research, as well as for property purchases and political donations.

The collapse of FTH cast further doubt on the crypto industry, which was already dealing with major drops in the value of Bitcoin. Bankman-Fried was one of the most prominent figures in the sector, leading an exchange that had more than a million users and was ranked by some as the third largest trading platform in the world.

Bankman-Fried admitted mismanagement but denied fraud. Three of his closest associates pleaded guilty and are cooperating with investigators. If convicted, he faces more than 100 years in prison.