Ryan Salame, co-CEO of Bahamas-primarily based FTX Digital Markets, alerted regulators in the nation to doable fraud at the replace earlier than it declared chapter.

Per courtroom filings on Wednesday, Salame suggested the Securities and Swap Commission of the Bahamas on Nov. 9 that FTX had transferred client property to Alameda Research. FTX filed for Chapter 11 chapter on Nov. 11.

Salame suggested regulators that transfers of this nature weren’t allowed and “would possibly presumably well perchance also merely describe misappropriation, theft, fraud or one more crime.” He successfully-known that most attention-grabbing three of us had the required codes or passwords to accomplish such transfers – then-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, head of engineering Nishad Singh, and co-founder Gary Wang.

The FTX executive’s disclosure precipitated Christina Rolle, the director of the Bahamas Securities Commission, to ask the police to review the replace. In her letter to the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Rolle acknowledged that Salame had left the island province for Washington D.C.

The revelation that Salame became to blame for handing over incriminating evidence in opposition to Bankman-Fried has rarely made him a hero in the eyes of the crypto neighborhood. Many market participants had been lengthen by the news, drawing attention to several of Salame’s tweets over the last few months where he took digs at Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.

Salame became also in a relationship with Michelle Bond, a Republican congressional candidate who FTX paid $400,000 in “consulting prices,” as per a file from Industry Insider in November.

At the time of writing, Bankman-Fried is basically the most attention-grabbing FTX executive who has been charged with fraud and securities violations. The prices in opposition to him would possibly presumably well perchance lift a maximum sentence of 115 years.