Ex-FTX manager Ryan Salame gets long prison sentence

A US federal judge yesterday sentenced former FTX manager Ryan Salame to 7.5 years in prison in Manhattan, Bloomberg reports. The judge's decision amounts to more time behind bars than even the U.S. Attorney's Office had recommended - up to seven years. It is also considerably longer than the 18 months the former FTX head's lawyers had asked for.

Salame is considered a close confidant of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March after a sensational trial. In September, he pleaded guilty to giving tens of millions of U.S. dollars in illegal campaign contributions. This was to further the legislative goals of FTX and Bankman-Fried.

As an " intermediary," the then CEO of an FTX subsidiary in the Bahamas helped pump "more than $100 million in illegal contributions into the US political system," according to the US government. "He knew exactly what he was doing and he knew why he was doing it," Judge Kaplan said. "He knew it was illegal and the whole idea was to hide it from the world. Amazing."

Salame is only the first of Bankman-Fried's closest associates to be convicted. He was the only one of the four former FTX executives to plead guilty, but did not testify against SBF during the trial. The three other FTX executives are former FTX co-founder Gary Wang, chief engineer Nishad Singh and Alameda Research director Caroline Ellison.