- He is one of Bankman-Fried’s closest associates
- He was involved in the creation of the exchange and served as co-CEO of the Bahamas unit
- Salame also received millions in royalties from Alameda Research, as did other members of top management
In the early morning of Thursday, April 27, FBI agents came to search the home of one of the FTX exchange founders.
According to unconfirmed reports, law enforcers were interested in checks that Salame sent to politicians at the White House.
The NYT magazine reported this, citing its sources. Ryan Salame’s home is in Potomac, Maryland. It’s a luxury mansion worth about $4 million.
Salame has been called one of Bankman-Fried’s closest associates..
He was also suspected of being part of a “bonus program” in which former top FTX executives received suspicious deductions from Alameda Research.
Bankman-Fried, for example, received about $2.2 billion into his own accounts.. Former exchange CTO Nishad Singh received $587 million and Ryan Salame received $87 million.
Co-CEO of FTX Digital Trading also participated in programs to support individual politicians in the U.S.. He reportedly set aside about $24 million for this purpose.
It is not yet known what the search of Salame’s home involved.. However, he had not previously been reported as a defendant in the fraud case.
So far, neither Salame nor the FBI have had any comment on the situation. Earlier we covered the first FTX debtors report.
In it, the affected partners and clients of the company cite the factors that led to the bankruptcy of the exchange.
One of these is the strong centralization of power, with only a small group of Bankman-Fried associates making most decisions in the company.