- This is one of Bankman-Fried’s closest comrades.
- He helped build the exchange and served as co-CEO of the Bahamas division.
- Salame also received millions of dollars from Alameda Research, like other members of top management.
Early on Thursday morning, April 27, FBI agents came to search the home of one of the founders of the FTX exchange. According to unconfirmed reports, law enforcement officers were interested in checks that Salame sent to politicians in the White House.
The magazine reports NYT citing their sources. Ryan Salame’s home is in Potomac, Maryland. This is a luxurious mansion worth about $4 million.
Salameh is called one of the closest associates of Bankman-Fried. He is also suspected to have been part of a “bonus program” in which former FTX executives received suspicious royalties from Alameda Research.
So, for example, about $2.2 billion was received into the accounts of Bankman-Fried himself. The former technical director of the exchange Nishad Singh received $587 million, Ryan Salame – $87 million.
Co-CEO of FTX Digital Trading has also been involved in support programs for selected politicians in the US. Reportedly, he allocated about $24 million for these purposes.
So far, it is not known what the search in Salame’s house is connected with. However, he was not previously declared as a defendant in the fraud case. So far, neither Salameh nor the FBI have commented on the situation. We previously covered the first report of FTX debtors. In it, the affected partners and clients of the company cite the factors that caused the bankruptcy of the exchange. One of them is the strong centralization of power, when most decisions in the company were made only by a small group of Bankman-Fried associates.
