An Alameda employee connected to China objected to Sam Bankman-Fried’s alleged bribery scheme. He told her to ‘shut the f*** up’

Chinese government froze Alameda as part of money laundering probe, former CEO Caroline Ellison testifies at trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried Accounts at Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges OKX and Huobi (now HTX). The $1 billion was a large portion of Alameda’s deal capital at the time, and Bankmand-Fried quickly assembled a team to recover the funds, including Ellison, other senior executives, and two Alameda employees, David Ma and Handi Yang, their “with China.”

After several face-to-face meetings and exchanging messages in a dedicated group on the encrypted messaging app Signal, the team hired a lawyer to negotiate with the Chinese government, which took months without any results. Alameda also tried to use the ID cards of Thai prostitutes to withdraw funds through hidden accounts. That, too, Allison explains, failed.

Former employee David Ma allegedly had another plan: bribing Chinese officials. But Yang’s father, a Chinese government official, strongly opposed it.

At one point, Yang repeatedly objected to Ma’s idea, but Bankman-Fried told her to “shut the fuck up.”

Ignoring Yang’s point, Allison said Bankman-Fried allegedly directed employees in November 2021 to send $150 million through a series of transactions to multiple crypto wallets that she believed were controlled by Chinese government officials .

Yang later quit the company on apparently unhappy terms, with SBF and former Alameda co-CEO Sam Trabucco joking about the alleged bribery.

“Did Handy’s dad report us immediately?” Trabuco wrote in the Signal chat.

“Haha,” Bankman-Fried responded.

Nearly a year later, Alameda successfully recovered $1 billion, but the entire operation remains secret, according to Allison.

Ellison later said in an update to the SBF in November that the alleged $150 million bribe was just “a thing.”