Restaurateur, Political Donor, Tipster: The Many Roles of FTX’s Ryan Salame
By contrast, Mr. Salame said at times that he was in crypto because it was a way to get rich, according to a person who knows him. He enjoyed expensive cars, flew on private jets and had a reputation for hard partying.
Divided government. What does a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-run Senate mean for the next two years? Most likely a return to the gridlock and brinkmanship that have defined a divided federal government in recent years.
As FTX grew, Mr. Salame began building his profile in Washington as a big Republican donor. During the midterm elections, Mr. Salame gave $24 million, primarily to Republican candidates and committees, while Mr. Bankman-Fried gave about $40 million, primarily to Democrats. Together, they formed a bipartisan megadonor tag team, with fund-raisers on both sides of the aisle clamoring for access to a stream of donations that many expected to last decades.
The contributions were part of an effort by FTX executives to win supporters in both political parties as they sought to shape U.S. regulation around the cryptocurrency industry.
The campaign donation records reveal “a coordinated effort between S.B.F. and Ryan Salame, where they are making sure that they had all corners tucked,” said Craig Holman, an official at the watchdog group Public Citizen who focuses on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules. “It’s much more extensive than you usually see when someone is trying to launder money to officeholders and candidates.”
Mr. Salame split his time between the Bahamas and Washington, where he lived with his girlfriend, Michelle Bond. The pair quickly became something of a crypto power couple in the nation’s capital, where Ms. Bond runs a lobbying group called the Association for Digital Assets Markets that was supported by FTX. (Mr. Salame once told a colleague that he and Ms. Bond were drawn together partly by their shared affection for Mr. Bankman-Fried, according to a person familiar with the interaction.)
Ms. Bond, who did not respond to requests for comment, has a photograph of herself and Mr. Salame at the top of her Twitter profile. He has the same one on his. This summer, the couple paid about $4 million in cash for a five-bedroom home in Potomac, Md., according to property records.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/business/ftx-ryan-salame.html