Former CSFB Officer Gets Five-Year Sentence for Insider Trading
January 28, 2005admin No Comments »A former compliance officer at Credit Suisse First Boston was sentenced today at a London court to five years in prison for insider trading.
Asif Butt was convicted in December for conspiracy to insider deal for passing confidential information about the securities firm’s clients to four non-CSFB employees, who placed so-called spread bets on the tips.
The men, who were also convicted of conspiracy to insider deal, netted profits of more than 260,000 pounds ($490,000) from betting on 19 different companies between July 1998 and January 2002, while Butt was working at CSFB’s Canary Wharf office, according to City of London Police.
Butt, Alex Coleman, Richard Judson, Ian Beale and Daniel Masters were each sentenced today at a hearing at Southwark Crown Court in central London. Beale and Judson were sentenced to two years. Masters was sentenced to 12 months and Coleman to nine months.
It’s the first successful prosecution for insider trading in Britain where the leaked information has been used to place spread bets, City of London Police said. Spread betting allows traders to bet on the price of a security rising or falling without owning the underlying security.
CSFB, a unit of Credit Suisse Group, Switzerland’s second- biggest bank, fired Butt in January 2002 after discovering the activity.
“We are pleased with the outcome of the case,” CSFB spokeswoman Rebecca O’Neill said in an e-mailed statement. “By his own admission, Mr. Butt acted dishonestly and in flagrant breach of trust throughout his employment at CSFB.”
All five men, who police said used nicknames like Walrus and Flopsy between them, denied they had acted illegally.
Bets were placed on companies including The Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the U.K.’s second-largest bank by assets, and EMI Group Plc, the world’s third-largest record company.
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