Former FTX executive seeks to rescind plea agreement, accuses prosecutors of illegal investigation of girlfriend

Author: Ava Benny-Morrison, Chris Dolmetsch, Bloomberg; Translator: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

Former FTX executive Ryan Salame has asked a U.S. judge to throw out his conviction or block any prosecution of his girlfriend, accusing prosecutors of reneging on an agreement to stop investigating her if he reaches a plea deal. Ryan Salame leaves federal court in New York on May 28. Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg But government lawyers who filed a criminal complaint against FTX insiders said there was no such agreement and called Salame’s allegations false and incomplete.

The former boss of FTX’s Bahamas subsidiary made the sensational allegations in a federal court filing in New York on Wednesday,nearly three months after he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for his role in illegal activities before the cryptocurrency platform’s collapse.

Michelle Bond Photograph: James Carbone/Newsday/Getty Images

According to the documents, prosecutors used the plea negotiations to threaten Michelle Bond, Salaam's partner and the mother of Salaam's eight-month-old child. In April 2023, the FBI searched the Maryland home where Bond lived with Salaam. Bond is a cryptocurrency advocate and a 2022 Republican candidate for Congress.

“In order to induce Salaam to plead guilty, government lawyers said they would stop their investigation of Bond if Salaam pleaded guilty,” attorney Christopher Bartolomucci wrote.

A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment. But in a response letter filed Wednesday evening, the office offered a different view and urged the court to reject Salaam’s “brazen” attempt to renege on his guilty plea.

The government said it explicitly told Salaam’s lawyers in a May 2023 virtual meeting that his guilty plea would not stop the investigation into Bond’s own conduct.

“It was following this call that Salaam pleaded guilty,” the government’s letter reads.

A prolific political donor during his time at FTX, Salaam pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and operating an unlicensed money transmitter. He claims the government has resumed its investigation of Bond for campaign finance violations, but Bond has not yet been charged with any crime.

Salaam asked U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to block any prosecution of Bond or else vacate his conviction and plea agreement.

“In this case, the government failed to fulfill its implied assurances that it had made to secure Salaam’s guilty plea, which any reasonable person would have interpreted as an assurance that the government would cease any investigation of Bond,” Salaam’s court filing states.

Salaam is the last of four top FTX figures to plead guilty to criminal offenses following a sweeping investigation that led to FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried being sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Unlike former Bankman-Fried deputies Nishad Singh, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, Salaam did not sign a cooperation agreement and did not testify at Bankman-Fried’s trial late last year. There are no written conditions in Salaam’s plea agreement to support his claims of prosecutors’ assurances.

He claims an assistant U.S. attorney told him that while the condition could not be written into his plea agreement, if the government ended its investigation into Salaam, the investigation into Bond would also end.

The motion comes less than two months before Salaam is to begin serving his prison sentence, which was delayed after Salaam recently required surgery for a facial injury from a German shepherd.