US prosecutors have reportedly targeted Ryan Salame – ex-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary – over a possible breach of the law when donating funds to his then-girlfriend’s political campaign in 2022.
Previous sources have informed that Michelle Bond (the woman in question) has received at least $400,000 in consulting fees from FTX Digital Markets – the entity that Salame ran. According to The New York Times, the American personally donated $1.5 million to the GMI super PAC (a newly-formed committee that supported crypto-friendly candidates), which in turn used some of the funds to popularize Bond’s campaign.
Salame Takes Another Punch
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have launched an investigation against Salame to examine the donations that he handed to his then-girlfriend Michelle Bond. She ran for the Republican nomination for a congressional seat in New York last year.
FTX executives, including the former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, have made generous donations to politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties prior to the collapse of the exchange.
Despite the probe, the pair was not accused of wrongdoing. Their lawyers and the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan have not yet spoken on the matter.
The FBI has also put Salame under its radar, raiding his house in Potomac, Maryland, at the end of April. The exact reason behind the search remained unclear. However, some speculations emerged claiming it could be connected to the FTX crash that shook the entire crypto industry in November 2022.
Salame took a central role in the scandal after he told the Bahamian regulators that the once-prominent platform might have misappropriated billions of dollars in customers’ funds and transferred them to Alameda Research.
The Investigation Has no Relation to SBF
The coverage further informed that the most recent probe against Salame is being treated separately from the case against SBF.
Numerous regulators and authorities have accused the former CEO of conducting several crimes, such as wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. However, he has pleaded not guilty and refused to be blamed as the main culprit behind the meltdown of the company he founded.
SBF spent a brief time in a Bahamian jail before being deported to the USA. The American magistrates allowed him to live with his parents until the trial on October 2 under a whopping $250 million bond. He could receive a 115-year prison sentence if found guilty.
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