Comments
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged a former employee of JP Morgan’s San Francisco office, Ashish Aggarwal, with illegally tipping a close friend with confidential information about clients involved in impending mergers and acquisitions of technology companies.
Illegal tipsInvestigation of the SEC revealed Ashish Aggarwal tipped Shahriyar Bolandian, who traded on the basis of the illegal tips in his own accounts as well as accounts belonging to his father and sister.
Bolandian also tipped his friend Kevan Sadigh so he could trade on the confidential information.
Bolandian and Sadigh bought the same series of call options in PLX Technology and ExactTarget. Their trades were often within hours or even minutes of each other, and typically were 100 per cent of the daily trading volume of those option series, said SEC.
Bolandian used a brokerage account located offshore in the Bahamas. This account was opened and funded with his credit card a week before the ExactTarget deal was announced, according to SEC.
Bolandian traded on Aggarwal’s behalf in an arrangement that enabled him to bypass JP Morgan’s pre-clearance rules and potentially to share in any profits, said SEC.
Disgorgement demandSEC’s complaint in a California district court sought a final judgment ordering Aggarwal, Bolandian and Sadigh to pay disgorgement of their illegal gains plus pre-judgment interest and penalties, besides permanent injunctions from future violations of the extant federal securities laws.
It also sought that the father and sister of Bolandian disgorge the illegal gains they obtained from the insider trading.
In a parallel action, the US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced criminal charges against the three.
Twenty-seven-year-old Ashish Aggarwal, is a graduate from the University of California-Berkeley and worked with JP Morgan between June 2011 and June 2013.
Shahriyar Bolandian, aged 26, is a graduate from Berkeley and was employed by Greek Life Threads, an e-commerce company specialising in college fraternity and sorority clothing.
Kevan Sadigh, a 28-year old graduate from the University of California-Irvine in 2009, founded Greek Life Threads.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.