Top FTX executive sentenced to 7½ years in prison
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Ryan Salame enjoyed expensive cars and private jets, and was a prolific political donor.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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NEW YORK - Ryan Salame, a top executive at collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to 7½ years in prison on May 28, making him the first of Sam Bankman-Fried’s circle of advisers at FTX to receive prison time.
Salame, 30, a trusted lieutenant of the exchange’s founder, pleaded guilty in 2023 to a campaign finance law violation
He is one of four top deputies in the FTX empire who have pleaded guilty to crimes since the company imploded in November 2022.
Salame’s sentence exceeded the five to seven years that prosecutors had recommended.
He is set to surrender on Aug 29. His lawyers requested that he serve his sentence at the federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland, near his home.
Before FTX failed, Salame was a key figure at the exchange, overseeing its subsidiary in the Bahamas, where the company was based.
As FTX grew into a US$32 billion (S$43 billion) business, Salame spent lavishly. He enjoyed expensive cars and private jets.
He was also a prolific political donor, giving more than US$24 million in the 2022 US midterm elections, mostly to Republicans.
When FTX imploded, Salame became a target of federal prosecutors, who searched his home in Maryland.
In September, Salame pleaded guilty, admitting that he had acted as an illegal “straw donor” who made political contributions at the direction of Bankman-Fried to evade federal disclosure requirements. Prosecutors called it “one of the largest ever” campaign finance offences in US history.
As part of his plea deal, Salame agreed to pay a US$6 million fine and more than US$5 million in restitution.
Before the sentence was announced, Salame briefly addressed the court, apologising to FTX’s customers and his family.
But Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said a long sentence was necessary to send a message to wealthy people about “the consequences of perverting our electoral system and its rules”. Salame “knowingly and wilfully assisted in destroying the limited transparency that the laws of the United States provide in this area”, he said. NYTIMES
