Sam Bankman-Fried’s problems keep unraveling and deepening following the collapse of FTX, the crypto exchange he cofounded and headed until recently.

Last week, the FTX former CEO was arrested in the Bahamas at the request of the US authorities, and he is facing criminal charges that may put him away for life.

The FTX’s implosion is the latest scandal to rock the crypto industry, stirring fresh calls for government’s regulation.

Bankman-Fried, who has from the beginning denied any wrongdoing, is now being exposed for his role in the fraud that wrecked FTX as his allies turn on him. Last week, as he was being extradited to the US to face criminal charges, two of his associates pleaded guilty to multiple charges of fraud and conspiracy.

Caroline Ellison was the former CEO of the crypto hedge fund Alameda, a subsidiary of FTX. The 28-year-old was in a brief romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried. Gary Wang was FTX’s chief technology officer, a close friend of Bankman-Fried.

Wang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Ellison pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In her testimony contained in court documents, Ellison said that she and her former associates knowingly stole billions of dollars from customers of Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange and sought to cover it up.

She also said that Alameda had a virtually unlimited borrowing facility in FTX, and that she knew the exchange would need to use customer funds to finance loans to the hedge fund.

Bankman-Fried was accused of moving $10 billion of traders’ funds to Alameda, an accusation he denied, saying the companies operate separately. Ellison said she agreed to keep the two firms’ unusually close relationship hidden from investors and customers.

According to transcripts from plea hearings held on December 19, Ellison told the court that from July through October, she agreed with Bankman-Fried and others to provide “materially misleading financial statements to Alameda’s lenders,” and prepared balance sheets that concealed the extent of Alameda’s borrowing.

She also said that she knew that FTX executives created an arrangement that gave Alameda access to an unlimited line of credit without being required to post collateral or pay interest on negative balances, according to court documents.

“I understood that if Alameda’s FTX accounts had significant negative balances in any particular currency, it meant that Alameda was borrowing funds that FTX’s customers had deposited onto the exchange,” Ellison said in court.

In his testimony, Wang told the court that part of his role at FTX included making changes to the exchange’s code that would grant Alameda “special privileges” on FTX.

“Between 2019 and 2022, as part of my employment at FTX, I was directed to and agreed to make certain changes to the platform’s code,” Wang said in court. “I executed those changes, which I knew would give Alameda Research special privileges on the FTX platform. I did so knowing that others were representing to investors and customers that Alameda had no such special privileges and people were likely investing in and using FTX based in part on those misrepresentations.”

“I knew what I was doing was wrong,” he added.

With his associates’ guilty pleas, Bankman-Fried is facing a more severe case than before. Both Wang and Ellison standing as witnesses against Bankman-Fried will give prosecutors a swift path to his conviction.

Both Wang and Ellison, whose sentencing is billed for December 19, 2023, and face up to 50 and 110 years in prison respectively, according to federal sentencing guidelines, are cooperating with federal prosecutors.

“Gary has accepted responsibility for his actions and takes seriously his obligations as a cooperating witness,” Wang’s attorney said in a statement.

Occultism also known as mysticism or transcendentalism is an age-long vocation which probably ushered the beginning of enlightenment and human civilization. Occultism is a field of knowledge that aims to demystify, understand and explain mysteries or things that are inherently esoteric.

Since the Renaissance period, Occultism as a field of study or a system of practice has diminished in relevance among men and today it merely represents an endangered part of the ancient wisdom with some of its treasures lost to modernism and postmodernism. The sentiment and indignation often shared by some of the few surviving occultists and the modern initiates of the system is that enlightenment and civilization which is now generally associated to science is actually a corollary to demystification which is the traditional focus of occultism.

The divide between science and occultism arguably centres on the methodologies of both vocation rather than on their philosophies. Occultism centers on psychical method and science on systematic method. However, both vocations share a common purpose, and that is to advance the frontiers of knowledge and develop the state of humanity.

Unlike science whose evolution has been traced to the Renaissance or the Cartesian era, the dissection of the root and etymology of occultism is invariably accompanied by controversies. Several accounts that have traced the origin of Occultism reference different eras lived by the founding fathers of the different schools of occultism. However, the common belief is that occultism derived its essence from when man became conscious of his environment and identified his place in the cosmos.

But exactly when man became conscious of his environment is another focus of discussion entirely — it is as a matter of fact a question that curiously evades most attempts that have been put forward to answer it.

Many scholars have been disgusted by how berated and relegated to the background occultism has become today despite the beauty and contribution of the system to humanity. Mohammed Abdelbaki, a scholar from north Africa remonstrated:

“it’s unfortunate that occultism has come to be cast in such dark shadows, because it truly is a place of wonder and offers opportunities to enrich and embrace life in many ways.

“The key to understanding the realm of the occult is to approach it without fear, bias or desire to use it for unscrupulous reasons. It is a world of multifaceted possibilities, like a beautiful gemstone that reveals a different view of the world at every angle” he said.