Ryan Salame pleaded guilty yesterday, September 7, in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan. This emerges from a report by Bloomberg official court documents quoted.
Specifically, the 30-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business. Each of the charges carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
There are serious allegations against FTX and its management team. CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried ran a years-long fraud system on the crypto exchange, used customer funds for personal purposes, made high-risk bets through the hedge fund Alameda Research and made political donations to influence regulation.
FTX: $24 million for political influence
Salame served as co-CEO of the FTX subsidiary in the Bahamas. During his time at the crypto exchange, he is said to have donated a total of $24 million to support Republican campaigns. And used money from accounts at Alameda Research.
The former executive agreed to a $1.5 billion seizure as part of his guilty plea. However, the government only claims a full confiscation of assets if Salame lies or does not hand over a lower amount. Meanwhile, $700 million is being demanded back from Sam Bankman-Fried.
However, the 30-year-old’s confession does not include a promise to testify against Sam Bankman-Fried. In addition to Salame, three other ex-FTX managers have already pleaded guilty: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Reasearch, Gary Wang, FTX co-founder and Nishad Singh, head of the tech department. They had agreed to testify as witnesses against SBF – in order to receive a potential reduction in sentence.
Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried remains in custody awaiting trial in less than a month. He pleaded not guilty.
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