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Author: Ava Benny-Morrison, Chris Dolmetsch, Bloomberg; Compilation: Wuzhu, Bitchain Vision
Former FTX executive Ryan Salame has asked a U.S. judge to drop his conviction or block any prosecution against his girlfriend, accusing prosecutors of violating a deal that would stop investigating his girlfriend if he reached a plea agreement.
Ryan Salam left federal court in New York on May 28.Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg
But government lawyers who filed criminal proceedings against FTX insiders said there was no such agreement and said Salame’s allegations were false and incomplete.
The former owner of the FTX Bahamas subsidiary filed sensational charges in a federal court filing in New York on Wednesday,He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for participating in illegal activities before the cryptocurrency platform went bankrupt nearly three months ago.
Michelle Bond Photo by James Carbone/Newsday/Getty Images
According to the documents, prosecutors used plea negotiations to threaten Salam’s partner Michelle Bond, the mother of Salam’s eight-month-old child.In April 2023, the FBI searched the Maryland home where Bond and Salam lived together.Bond is a cryptocurrency advocate and a 2022 Republican Congress candidate.
“To induce Salam to plead guilty, the government lawyer saidIf Salam pleads guilty, they will stop investigating Bond,” wrote attorney Christopher Bartolomucci.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment.But in a response letter filed Wednesday night, the office raised a different view and urged the court to reject Salam’s attempt to “shamelessly” violate the guilty plea.
The government said it explicitly told Salam’s lawyers at a virtual meeting in May 2023 that his plea would not stop the investigation into Bond’s own actions.
“It was after this call that Salam pleaded guilty,” the government’s letter read.
Salam, a prolific political donor during his tenure at FTX, admitted to violating campaign finance laws and operating an unlicensed remittance agency.He claimed the government has resumed investigations into Bond’s campaign finance law violations, but Bond has not been charged with any crimes.
Salam asked U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to block any prosecution against Bond or to revoke his conviction and plea agreement.
“In this case, the government failed to fulfill its implicit assurance that it made to ensure that Salam confesses guilty, which any rational person would interpret as a guarantee that the government would cease any investigation into Bond,” Salam’sCourt documents state.
After a comprehensive investigation, Salam is the last of four senior FTX figures to plead guilty to a criminal offense, which led to 25 years in jail for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Unlike former Bankman-Fried deputy Nishad Singh, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, Salam did not sign a cooperation agreement and did not testify at Bankman-Fried’s trial late last year.There is no written condition in Salam’s plea agreement to support his claims regarding the prosecutor’s assurance.
He claimed that an assistant U.S. attorney told him that while the condition could not be written into his plea agreement, the investigation into Bond would also end if the administration concluded its investigation into Salaam.
The motion was proposed less than two months before Salam began serving his sentence.Salam was recently bitten by a German shepherd in the face and therefore needed surgery, so his sentence was postponed.
