Former FTX executive Ryan Salame asks to withdraw guilty plea, accusing prosecutors of breaking promises

Ryan Salame, a former senior manager at FTX cryptocurrency exchange, requested on Wednesday to revoke his previous plea agreement for campaign finance and money transfer crimes in front of a New York federal judge. Salame's lawyer stated in court documents that the Manhattan US Attorney's Office promised Salame and his lawyer in April 2023 that they would stop investigating Salame's domestic partner Michelle Bond's campaign finance violations if he pleaded guilty in September last year.However, the lawyer stated that "the government failed to keep its promise and recently resumed the investigation into Bond and is seeking to prosecute her." Salame's lawyer requested that Manhattan federal district court judge Lewis Kaplan order the revocation of Salame's guilty plea or require the prosecution to follow through on its promise not to prosecute Bond.Salame was originally scheduled to begin serving a 7.5-year sentence on October 13. He was also ordered to pay over $6 million in fines and more than $5 million in restitution.It is worth noting that Salame is not a cooperating witness in the FTX criminal investigation, but he testified in the criminal trial of former FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried last fall. Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. Currently, the other three cooperating witnesses who testified in the trial, including former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang, are awaiting sentencing.