Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been charged with another crime: bribery. In an indictment filed Tuesday, the Justice Department said Bankman-Fried "authorized and directed bribes of at least $40 million to one or more Chinese government officials."

The bribe was allegedly to get Chinese officials to unfreeze some accounts linked to FTX's sister company Alameda, which contained more than $1 billion in cryptocurrencies. According to the Justice Department, all of this occurred in November 2021, when Bankman-Fried wanted access to the funds to assist Alameda in "obtaining and retaining the business." The indictment states that BankmanFried used "numerous methods" in trying to unfreeze the funds, and then allegedly resorted to bribery, which eventually led to the funds being unfrozen.

"After confirming that the accounts had been unfrozen, Bankman-Fried authorized the transfer of tens of millions of dollars in additional cryptocurrencies to carry out the bribes," the indictment said. Alameda uses the unfrozen cryptocurrency to fund other trading activities."

In addition to this latest bribery charge, the new bail conditions prohibit the cryptocurrency founder from using a smartphone. BankmanFried's new non-smartphone will not be able to access the Internet or Signal, which Bankman-Fried allegedly tried to use to contact his colleagues while on bail. He will also have to hand over his existing laptop, which "will be configured to only allow access" to certain websites, such as YouTube, Wikipedia and Netflix.

In December, Bankman-Fried was arrested and charged with money laundering and fraud. Although the crypto exchange founder was released on $250 million bail shortly thereafter, federal prosecutors filed four additional charges against him in February, including new counts of bank fraud and money laundering, as well as campaign finance charges.