Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, is reportedly discussing a guilty plea with authorities in the United States.
According to an Aug. 8 Bloomberg report, lawyers for Salame could enter a guilty plea as early as September, in advance of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial, scheduled to start on Oct. 2. Prosecutors had reportedly been investigating Salame for potential violations of U.S. campaign finance law related to his girlfriend Michelle Bond’s run for Congress, in which they both allegedly exceeded the federal limits on contributions.
It’s unclear whether Salame could be a witness at either of Bankman-Fried’s trials — one for seven counts in October 2023 and another for five counts in March 2024. FTX Digital Markets was the crypto exchange’s affiliate in the Bahamas, where Salame tipped off the authorities about FTX’s and Bankman-Fried’s alleged fraud.
Ryan Salame tipped Bahamian regulators onto the fact FTX was sending customer assets to Alameda in the first confirmed instance of an FTX exec assisting authorities in the case. https://t.co/BBQT8T9c35
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) December 15, 2022
Related: Prosecutors will still consider Sam Bankman-Fried’s alleged campaign finance scheme at trial
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to all 12 charges he’s currently facing. However, former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December 2022. Ellison is expected to be a witness in the U.S. prosecutors’ case against SBF starting in October despite recently being targeted in a New York Times article exposing personal details about her relationship with the former CEO.
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