Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Ministry is reportedly investigating Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) for fraud and has seized assets linked to FTX within the country.

Scrutiny into the business activities of FTX and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, continues to widen globally.

According to Turkey’s news platform Anadolu Agency, the country has launched an investigation on the founder and former CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, over potential fraudulent activities. The probe was announced by Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Ministry on Wednesday.

The report by Anadolu Agency added that Turkish authorities had seized assets belonging to ‘Sam Bankman-Fried, and affiliates’ as part of the investigations.

Nureddin Nebati, the Treasury and Finance Minister, said that the investigations were launched by the country’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK). Minister Nebati also pointed out that although digital assets brought opportunities, the industry still had underlying risks, and the crypto markets should be approached with ‘maximum caution.’

Authorities in Turkey Could be Trying to Make FTX Make Users Whole — Autism Capital

At the time of writing, the crypto Twitter community is already musing on the reasons why authorities in Turkey have launched an investigation into Sam Bankman-Fried and seized assets linked to the exchange.

One theory being proposed by the team at Autism Capital is that the Treasury and Finance Ministry is aiming to get FTX’s subsidiary in the country to make whole all Turkish users affected by the collapse of the crypto exchange and its halting of operations worldwide.

The Autism Capital team has since updated the Tweet with sources confirming that FTX had an entirely separate entity operating in Turkey ‘for regulatory reasons.’ Its employees also lost their life savings when it collapsed.

Another source claimed that FTX Turkey made users whole by refunding users’ funds back to their bank accounts. They added that only users who used the FTX Turkey platform were made whole, not those who used FTX international, as explained in the screenshot below.

（By John P. Njui）