A top FTX executive has been revealed as the mysterious donor who is allegedly behind a whopping $500,000 contribution to the Oregon State Democratic Party.
According to local news, Oregon Democrats initially told state election officials that the $500,000 donation was from Prime Trust, a crypto-focused fintech in Nevada.
However, on November 1, the party director revealed that the real source behind the donation was the director of FTX Engineering, Nishad Singh, which has been the state’s fourth-largest Democratic Party donor since November 2020.
Apparently there was some initial confusion about who was behind the half-million dollar donation.
The party’s state executive director, Brad Martin, told OregonLive in a statement that “based on documentation received from our bank” in October, the party “reasonably believed that this contribution was, in fact, from Prime Trust LLC.”
Weeks after the donation on October 4, and after the local media questioned why a Las Vegas company had made such a large contribution, Martin reportedly received a statement from Singh on October 28 telling him revealed that “had made a personal contribution to the (Oregon Democratic Party) and that Prime Trust LLC was not the donor.”
A Prime Trust spokesperson also clarified on Nov. 1 to OregonLive that “this is not a Prime Trust contribution to the political action committee. It is simply Prime Trust making the transfer on behalf of a client.”
The party has since modified its state campaign finance statement to reflect the true donor, multiple news reports have revealed.
The nature of the contribution may not be a surprise to some. Singh has been linked to political donations through the Prime Trust in the past, while Oregon politics has been the subject of FTX’s attention before.
An April Politico story found that a $14 million Prime Trust contribution to the political action committee, Protect Our Future, backed by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, was made up of $1 million from Singh and the rest of Bankman-Fried, as confirmed by FTX.
At that moment, FTX declined to comment on why the funds were routed through Prime Trust, with a Prime Trust spokesperson saying only that this type of transaction was “usual.”
The Bankman-Fried Protect Our Future super committee also reportedly donated between $8 million and $10 million to the Carrick Flynn campaign, a political novice and family friend running for a newly created US House district outside of Portland.
Prime Trust and Singh also contributed to those donations, according to the NGO Open Secrets.
Cointelegraph reached out to the Oregon Democratic Party and Brad Martin, but received no response at the time of publication of this story.
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