The Royal Bahamas Police Force arrested FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a press statement said.

The arrest came after the U.S. filed criminal charges against Bankman-Fried, the statement said, and the nation expects the U.S. to request The Bahamas extradite Bankman-Fried in short order.

"As a result of the notification received and the material provided therewith, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF’s arrest and hold him in custody pursuant to our nation’s Extradition Act," the statement, attributed to Attorney General Ryan Pinder, said. "At such time as a formal request for extradition is made, The Bahamas intends to process it promptly, pursuant to Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States."

A tweet from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York confirmed that prosecutors in the U.S. indicted Bankman-Fried, though the indictment remains under seal.

In the Bahamas' statement, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said the country would continue pursuing its own investigation into FTX's collapse, alongside the U.S.'s criminal charges.

Bankman-Fried was set to testify virtually before the House Financial Services Committee about the exchange's collapse on Tuesday. Spokespeople for both the Chair and Ranking Member did not immediately return requests for comment.

FTX fell last month after a CoinDesk report revealed that Alameda Research, a sister company also founded by Bankman-Fried, held a large number of FTT tokens, which are issued by FTX.

FTX filed for bankruptcy just over a month ago. Its new CEO, John J. Ray III, said in court filings and prepared Congressional testimony that he had never seen anything quite like the corporate governance and documentation failures that he found at FTX.

Among other issues, he found that FTX had heavily commingled customer and corporate assets, losing billions along the way. In his prepared remarks, published earlier Monday, he said his new team had managed to secure about $1 billion of company assets to date.

For his part, Bankman-Fried went on a press tour after leaving his company, speaking to the New York Times, New York Magazine, Vox and numerous other news outlets. He spoke at a Twitter Spaces and in a live Forbes interview earlier on Monday.

UPDATE (Dec. 12, 2022, 23:45 UTC): Adds additional comment.

UPDATE (Dec. 13, 00:30 UTC): Adds statement from SDNY, additional context.