PANews reported on August 30 that Ryan Salame, a former FTX executive who was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison in May, has withdrawn his legal request to the New York court, which requested the execution of the conditions of the plea agreement he reached with prosecutors, or the dismissal of his guilty plea and the revocation of his sentence. Last week, Salame's lawyers filed a complaint with the court, claiming that prosecutors obtained his guilty plea in an improper manner and forced him to agree to plead guilty by promising to stop investigating Michelle Bond, Salame's long-term partner and mother of his young children.
Salame’s petition was filed a day before the charges against Bond were made public. Bond, a former SEC attorney who for years led a Washington, D.C.-based cryptocurrency advocacy group, was indicted in federal court on Aug. 22 on charges of accepting illegal campaign contributions from Salame and other FTX employees during her unsuccessful 2022 run for Congress. According to the petition, prosecutors threatened Bond during plea negotiations and suggested that “if Salame pleaded guilty, prosecutors would stop their investigation of Bond.” However, now that Bond has been indicted, Salame has changed his tactics.
“Mr. Salame is withdrawing the Petition so that Ms. Bond may raise this matter in the Complaint,” Salame’s attorneys wrote in new court filings. “To be clear, Mr. Salame stands by the facts set forth in the Petition and its accompanying declaration. However, Mr. Salame is withdrawing the Petition so that Ms. Bond can proceed with further fact-finding and a determination of her case. Because the primary relief sought in the Petition is to dismiss the complaint against Ms. Bond, it is appropriate that the issues raised in the Petition be determined in the case pending the Complaint.”
Bond appeared before a magistrate judge in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) on August 22 and was released on $1 million bail. She was charged with four counts related to alleged campaign finance violations, each of which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted.
