Secrets of global insider trading network emerges

• Last week, Marc Demane Debih, a failed Swiss entrepreneur, revealed to a New York jury the secret methods he used to earn $70 million in illegal profit from a global insider-trading network. Testifying for U.S. prosecutors, he is the government’s star witness in the trial of Telemaque Lavidas, the first to face a U.S. jury after a multiyear government probe of a wider alleged conspiracy.
• “We agree with each other to share inside information and rumours,” Demane Debih said about his relationship with one member of the network. “If he got inside information, he would give it to me. I would trade it for him.”
• Prosecutors say Debih was a key player in a sprawling network of contacts on three continents that shared information about pending corporate takeovers and paid off tipsters – from executives to bankers to an art collector.
• After trading stocks for a few years, Demane Debih testified that he moved to London from Geneva to find his own sources of information, getting his first tip from a JPMorgan Chase & Co. investment banker. He also described how he got details about pending takeovers involving three mining companies from an unwitting girlfriend who worked at Goldman Sachs.

Source: Bloomberg

 

 

---