FTX former executive Ryan Salame pleads guilty in Bankman-Fried trial

Former co-CEO of FTX's Bahamian subsidiary andSam Bankman-Fried's top lieutenant, Ryan Salame pleaded guiltyon Thursday (September 7) in Manhattan federal court to makingtens of millions of dollarsin unlawful campaign donations.

The plea has been submitted less than one month before the scheduled October 3 trial of Bankman-Fried on conspiracy and fraud charges stemming from the November 2022 collapse of now-bankrupt FTX.

The prosecutors stated that billions of dollars were stolen by Bankman-Fried from FTX customer deposits to cover the losses of his hedge fund Alameda Research, and the lenders and investors were lied to about the financial condition of his companies.

Salame, 30,wasscheduled to appear before United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, who is also overseeing the case of Bankman-Fried, at 3 pm EDT (1900 GMT). Salame guilty plea makes him Bankman-Fried's companies' fourth former executive to plead guilty.

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He has now joined the list of former Alameda Chief Executive Officer Caroline Ellison, former FTX technology chief Gary Wang and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh, who are all likely to testify against Bankman-Fried at trial.

Salame has pleaded guilty at the hearing in the Manhattan court toone count of conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, as per Reuters.

This comes afterprosecutors said Salame, along with Bankman-Fried and Singh was responsible for using FTXcustomer funds to donate to political candidates supporting crypto-friendly legislation.

Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX

31-year-old Bankman-Fried led to a boom in the values of bitcoin as well as other digital assets to become an influential political donor and multi-billionaire. However, amid a number of customer withdrawals, his exchange collapsed.

Prosecutors stated that the stolen customer funds were used by Bankman-Fried for donations of more than $100 million to political campaigns so as to draw more support for favourable cryptocurrency regulations and that some donations were concealed through two "straw donors," Salame and Singh.

WATCH |Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried put behind bars

Salame was working for Ernst & Young and Circle Internet Financial before he joined FTX Digital Markets. Republican candidates as well as the causes during the 2022 election cycle were given more than $24 million by him which made him one of the top donors of that year, according to Federal Election Commision data.

In August, the prosecutors said that Salame informed a family member in a message, sent in the month of November 2021, that Bankman-Fried believed that political donations would "weed out" anti-crypto Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and would likely "route money through me to weed out that Republican [sic] side."

(With inputs from agencies)

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