US Prosecutor's Office: Opposes Former FTX Executive's Withdrawal of Guilty Plea protocol

Author: Turner Wright, CoinTelegraph; Translation: Wuzhu, Jinse Finance

The U.S. Attorney’s Office opposes the petition filed by former FTX Digital Markets Co-CEO Ryan Salame to withdraw his guilty plea protocol, which involves campaign finance violations.

Prosecutors in a document filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on August 26 stated that they would oppose in writing the petition submitted by Salame’s legal team before September 4. The former FTX executive’s lawyer submitted a petition for a writ of error, attempting to overturn Salame’s guilty protocol, which led to his sentence of seven and a half years in prison.

Salame claimed that prosecutors implied in his plea negotiations that they would not investigate his associate, Michelle Bond. On August 22, authorities released an indictment against Bond, accusing her of violating campaign finance laws during her 2022 run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Salame’s complaint is based on (blatantly false) accusations, that he was induced to plead guilty because the government stated that in exchange for pleading guilty, the government would cease investigating Bond’s and Salame’s conspiracy to commit criminal campaign finance violations,” the document said.

Source: SDNY

Bond is Salame’s partner during the collapse of FTX. She ran for Congress in the 2022 primary election in New York’s First Congressional District. Her candidacy did not continue in the Republican primary, losing by a margin of approximately 5,000 votes to Nicholas J. LaLota. The indictment accuses Bond and Salame of conspiring to misappropriate funds for her congressional campaign.

FTX Appears in Court for Trial

In September 2023, Salame admitted to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money remittance business and to participate in campaign finance fraud. In May, a federal judge sentenced him to 90 months in prison. Salame applied for a delay after suffering medical complications from a dog bite and is scheduled to report to prison on October 13th.

If the judge accepts Salame’s request to cancel his guilty protocol and judgment, he may face a comprehensive criminal trial in the future. The protocol he reached with the prosecutor requires him to pay a fine of approximately 6 million US dollars to the government and 6 million US dollars to FTX creditors.

Salame and Sam ‘SBF’ Bankman-Fried were listed in the same indictment, and he is the only person who did not testify in the trial of the former CEO of FTX. Former FTX Engineering Director Nishad Singh and co-founder Gary Wang pleaded guilty to the protocol, testified in SBF’s trial, and are scheduled to be sentenced in October and November respectively.

Since being sentenced, Salame has been active on X, making allegations against FTX executives, including former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, without clear evidence, claiming that Ellison is “more guilty than SBF”.

In March, a judge sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison. His legal team has filed a notice of appeal. As of the time of publication of this article, Ellison’s sentencing hearing has not been scheduled.