Former FTX executive Salame sentenced to 7.5 years in US prison
Al Jazeera
Ryan Salame pled guilty to tens of millions of dollars in unlawful campaign donations to boost causes supported by his boss.
Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary and a top lieutenant of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, has been sentenced to 90 months in prison, United States federal prosecutors have said.
Salame pleaded guilty in September to making tens of millions of dollars in unlawful campaign donations to boost causes supported by his boss. His seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence, announced on Tuesday, was longer than the five to seven years sought by prosecutors.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced earlier this year to 25 years in prison for stealing $8bn from FTX customers. A jury found him guilty in November on seven fraud and conspiracy counts stemming from FTX’s 2022 collapse, which prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in US history. Bankman-Fried has appealed the conviction and the sentence.
Prosecutors say Salame, Bankman-Fried and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh used FTX customer funds to donate to political candidates supporting crypto-friendly legislation.
Salame’s lawyers have tried to distance him from the FTX fraud. “He was duped, as was everyone else, into believing that the companies were legitimate, solvent and wildly profitable,” they said in a filing earlier in May ahead of the sentencing.
