By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Michelle Bond, a former U.S. congressional candidate and the romantic partner of former FTX cryptocurrency exchange executive Ryan Salame, has been charged with violating campaign finance laws, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said Bond, during her unsuccessful 2022 campaign for a New York congressional seat, used $400,000 from the cryptocurrency exchange where her partner was an executive to finance her campaign, in violation of laws prohibiting corporate contributions.
Prosecutors did not name Salame or FTX. But in a court filing on Wednesday, Salame accused prosecutors of reneging on an assurance they would not investigate Bond – who he said is the mother of his child – if he pleaded guilty.
Salame pleaded guilty last year to making tens of millions of dollars in unlawful campaign contributions to boost causes supported by his boss, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. He was sentenced in May to 7-1/2 years in prison.
In his Wednesday filing, Salame urged U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to vacate his guilty plea because prosecutors had resumed their investigation of Bond.
Bond, 45, worked at cryptocurrency trade group Association for Digital Asset Markets from 2020-2022, according to her LinkedIn profile. She lost a 2022 Republican primary to represent part of New York state’s Long Island in Congress.
She faces four criminal counts, including causing and receiving an unlawful contribution and causing and receiving a straw contribution.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison on charges of stealing $8 billion from FTX customers, which prosecutors called one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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