Two SEC Lawyers Investigated by FBI on Insider-Trading Concerns

Two SEC Lawyers Investigated by FBI on Insider-Trading Concerns


May 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. prosecutors and the FBI are investigating whether two Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers illegally used nonpublic information from the agency to bet on stocks, SEC Inspector General David Kotz said in a report.

Kotz, who told Congress last year he was examining whether frequent trades by the pair broke agency rules, referred the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington after finding evidence the bets might amount to insider trading, he wrote in the March 3 report released by Senator Charles Grassley. Both lawyers still work for the agency and denied improper conduct.

The report faults the agency for inadequately monitoring trades by employees and relying on an “honor system.” The lawyers frequently discussed stocks at work, traded in at least one company under investigation and didn’t properly disclose some transactions, it says. One lawyer made 247 trades in the two years ending January 2008, and the other made 14.

The agency “has essentially no compliance system in place” to ensure employees don’t abuse the “tremendous amount of nonpublic information they have at their disposal,” Kotz wrote.

The SEC is already working on steps to guard against potential misconduct, and the report doesn’t conclude that insider trading occurred, agency spokesman John Nester said. The SEC’s new chairman, Mary Schapiro, has “made it a priority to significantly improve the agency’s ethics and compliance programs around employee stock ownership,” he said.

“We take seriously even the suggestion that any SEC employee would engage in insider trading,” Nester said.

‘Hard to Imagine’

The regulator is developing a new computer system to collect and review reports of employee trades, Nester said. It is also hiring a chief compliance officer and “clarifying” rules on stock investments by personnel.

The 51-page report, redacted to remove names of employees and the stocks in which they traded, details stock bets. One of the SEC employees sold all her shares in a “large health-care company” two months before the agency began investigating the company, the report says. She also sold stock in a “global” oil company two days before the SEC opened an inquiry.

“It’s hard to imagine a more serious violation of the public trust than for the agency responsible for protecting investors to allow its employees to profit from non-public information about its enforcement activities,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a May 14 letter to Schapiro.

He asked what disciplinary action the employees will face and what the SEC has done to determine how “systemic” insider trading by agency staff may be. He also asked what systems the SEC has to “flag” suspicious transactions and whether the agency will impose further restrictions on employees’ trading. Grassley requested a briefing by agency staff by May 28.

Kotz has stepped up internal probes at the agency since he was appointed in December 2007, questioning the regulator’s policies, personnel decisions and handling of investigations. The SEC inspector general is responsible for conducting independent probes to detect waste, fraud and abuse.

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