Ex-congressman convicted of insider trading before T-Mobile merger with Sprint
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
- He had been out of Congress for over 8 years at the time of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger.
- He made considerably larger gains (2x, $100k more nominally) on his Navigant insider trade.
- None of his insider trading was related to either Congress directly or congressional info on the named merger, as one might infer from the title.
Why not “Former Rep. Turned Consultant Illegally Traded On Client Info From T-Mobile And Navigant” or something similar but more concise?
What makes you think so?
Or for another example, see the Hunter Biden/Burisma story. I think the media coverage of this is mostly partisan quackery, but it's a useful illustration here as to how you can make a good deal of money just being vaguely associated with american politicians. Hunter is certainly not unusual in this regard.
I thought you might be exaggerating, but if the wikipedia entry is to believed it seems like a pretty obvious case of laundering bribes:
"In 2003, Buyer created The Frontier Foundation, whose stated purpose is educational funding for college students ... Buyer's daughter Colleen was the president ... His son Ryan, in 2009, was director ... the foundation shared an office with Buyer's campaign office ... annual fundraising golf outings had raised more than $880,000 for the foundation. Almost all the contributions were from 20 companies and trade organizations that had interests before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which Buyer is a member ... In 2018, the Frontier Foundation was closed by Buyer, the only listed officer, without ever having funded a scholarship."
Excerpts from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Buyer#Frontier_Foundatio...
22 months is embarrassing, that no other agency could put him away first is even more embarrassing.
The word "scam" is a redundant modifier for an NGO :)
1: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
Law doesn't work that way. If you try and build a clever but hacky argument they don't care. They don't say "what a clever hack, you got us, you're free to go." They arrest you and charge you and maybe after your life is ruined by the expense of your legal defense, you don't actually have to go to prison (presuming you got bail for the 12-18 months it took for your case to wend through the courts)! Congratulations, you won your case! That's the good outcome! See, the law is enforced by people, not rules- it's the police, the prosecutors, the judges and the juries who uphold the law, not straightforward and simple software code. And people (very much including juries!) can tell what the intent of a law is, and they will (most of the time) enforce the intent of that law. Schemes to try and game the laws? That looks an awful lot like a guilty conscience which is sometimes a required factor in whether a crime was committed (especially on the sorts of financial crimes we're talking about here).
As for the actual law defining what public disclosure is, it's Regulation Fair Disclosure (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2000/08/24/00-2115... or https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/chapter-II/part-243). As I understand it, basically, the key step is that you file a 8-K form with the SEC who takes responsibility for publishing it widely, and there are rules on blackout periods for insider transactions around the filing of those 8-K's, but I'm not a lawyer, definitely don't treat what I say as legal advice, I just had to sit through lectures on this back when I worked as an engineer for a financial firm.
It's absurd that if he made use of the same secret information but while employed as a congressman (even if he was overseeing the merger) would mean he was fine.
Congress people and their staff are not immune from insider trading rules and in fact there is an explicit law saying so.
If you want to argue that they should be held to a higher standard that’s reasonable but the way the comment was worded suggested there is some extra immunity for Congress. Which there isn’t.
what is the definition of non-public information in the context of congress and corporate "inside" information? If the congressional subcommittees get briefed on the Covid crisis or trade laws or policy, they might have advance knowledge that companies themselves don't have. Or if a company insider reveals information to subcommittees, is that actually making the information public?
Should there be even more strict rules for Congress than there are? Sure! But it’s not because they currently aren’t subject to insider laws.
That said, historically one of the things US* insider trading requires "breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence". Trading on material non-public information is not enough, there must be a relationship, there is a whole industry of people devoted to trading on material non-public information. They just have to get it without that breach.
So the argument for congress people (presumably, I'm not an securities lawyer) would be that most of the information they receive they do not receive via a fiduciary relationship or one of trust and confidence. Or that by Congress getting it, it becomes part of the public record. Though I can certainly see sealed/confidential testimony going the other way.
*This is an important distinction. In the US insider trading laws aren't about protecting the markets, they are about protecting shareholders. Its more about theft than market manipulation. European laws can have a completely different basis.