By Greg Hazley
The SEC has charged an investor relations firm executive with advance access to Google's financials in its mounting insider trading case against hedge fund Galleon.
Hussain |
The SEC said Monday that it alleges Shammara Hussain, a staffer for San Francisco-based IR firm Market Street Partners, which did work for Google, as well as a senior executive at Polycom tipped inside information that enabled insider trading by two others on behalf of hedge funds for illicit profits of more than $15 million.
"Today's action reveals disturbingly corrupt arrangements — faithless company executives who secretly pass corporate information to hedge fund managers willing to violate the law for profit," Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement announcing charges against four defendents, including Hussain.
The SEC said Hussain tipped an investor and an aquaintance with inside information about Google's 2007 second quarter earnings. The investor traded on the information and also tipped two other traders who worked on behalf of Trivium Capital Management, a hedge fund advisory firm.
The SEC said Hussain asked for $100-$150K per quarter to provide further information, a charge which her attorney denied in 2009, when her name first surfaced in the case.
Market Street Parnters was set up in 2000 by veterans of Morgen-Walke Associates.
The SEC has now charged 27 defendants in the Galleon case.
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