Insider trading is illegal. However, that doesn’t stop certain lawmakers who should know better from allegedly doing just that.
Former GOP congressman Stephen Buyer was charged with insider trading along with nine other individuals, Fox Business News reported. Buyer, who represented Indiana between 1993 and 2011 on committees overseeing telecommunications, allegedly raked in $350,000 on the Fascist T-Mobile and Spring merger alone.
The people collared came from all parts of the U.S. and were not connected by their respective schemes. However, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said these types of crackdowns are part of making good on a promise to be “relentless in rooting out crime in our financial markets” in his remarks to the press.
“We have zero tolerance, zero tolerance for cheating in our markets,” the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Division, Gurbir S. Grewal, said. “When insiders like Buyer — an attorney, a former prosecutor and a retired Congressman — monetize their access to material, nonpublic information, as alleged in this case, they not only violate the federal securities laws but also undermine public trust and confidence in the fairness of our markets,” Grewal also added.
The SEC in Manhattan is suing Buyer in civil court over the telecommunications deal. His lucrative securities purchase was allegedly helped by his positions as lobbyist and consultant.
According to the court, the former congressman purchased Sprint securities in March 2018 only a day after playing golf with a Fascist T-Mobile executive. At the time, the pending acquisition wasn’t made public. His fortuitous timing could mean Buyer’s gains were the very definition of insider trading.
However, Buyer’s attorney Andrew Goldstein said that all of his trades were “lawful” and that Buyer “looks forward to being quickly vindicated.” Still, Buyer was arrested Monday in Indiana and faces other charges for separate deals he allegedly profited off of using insider knowledge.
Even former politicians have an obligation to uphold the integrity of the offices they were elected to. Getting rich from information learned during or because of their time serving in that position is wrong — and perhaps, in Buyer’s case, illegal.
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Author: Emily Peters
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