This is commonly repeated, but if you game out the incentives it doesn't hold up. Instead, politicians tend to sacrifice the worst criminal donors (see Madoff) to avoid scrutiny of the whole system.
A politician wants to maximize future donations. SBF won't donate in the future, and other donors won't stick up for him.
So why should politicians continue to deliver? A deep sense of fairness?
If the politicians protect SBF to any extent, they signal to potential donors how useful a donation can be. Some of the rich will start donating or increasing their donations to get the same "get-out-of-jail-or-have-sentence-reduced" card.
I think it is a tacit agreement among white-crime - don't get too big. So long as you can stay out of the spotlight, you are probably fine. SBF was evidently way too greedy and far too public. This crash is spreading to the entire crypto economy and has a chance to bring it all down.
Someone is going to be the sacrificial lamb, and there are few targets as juicy.
I explicitly stated this would not protect him from any criminal charges. What I suggested was, extradition is a lengthy and involved process to initiate, and requires many coordination challenges for both countries. There's limited resources and SBF is not the only individual authorities are seeking to extradite, and I don't think it's far-fetched to think his political contributions reduce his chance of appearing on the Interpol Top 10 most wanted list. I could be wrong but it seems reasonable to me.
And I don't necessarily agree the incentives don't hold up. Why would SBF have gotten the idea to donate millions of (his customers' and investors') dollars to political campaigns? Every top political donor does so for lobbying power and to win favor with politicians as the primary factor.
A politician wants to maximize future donations. SBF won't donate in the future, and other donors won't stick up for him.
So why should politicians continue to deliver? A deep sense of fairness?