By Matthew Russell Lee, Light Reading, Patreon
SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 25 – The two week trial against the proposed T-Mobile / Sprint merger ended on December 20, 2019 before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Victor Marrero. There were papers due January 8, and a final four hour argument on January 15. Inner City Press began what will be a trial-long live-tweet, here. Day 7 Patreon here.
On July 25, 2022 the SDNY prosecutors unsealed an indictment of ex Rep Stephen Buyer for illegal trading on the merger. They scheduled an 11:30 am press conference which Inner City Press went to attend with smart phone to live stream. Watch @InnerCityPress.
The press conference was jammed (photo here) and US Attorney Damian Williams said that one of the nine was allowed to self-surrender, without saying which one. Watch this site.
The charges: "(1.) U.S. v. Stephen Buyer – alleged insider trading in two companies by the defendant, a former U.S. Congressman, ahead of merger and acquisition announcements related to each company. Buyer allegedly obtained material nonpublic information (“MNPI”) about each of these deals by virtue of his retention as a consultant and lobbyist in connection with the deal. (2.) U.S. v. Seth Markin and Brandon Wong – the defendants are alleged to have together made more than $1.4 million dollars in illegal profits by trading in trading in stock based on inside information that Markin, who was at time an FBI agent in training, stole from his girlfriend, who was then an attorney at a major law firm in Washington D.C. assigned to work on the acquisition of Pandion Therapeutics by Merck & Co. In addition to their own trading, Wong and Markin are alleged to have told at least eight other people to purchase Pandion shares based on the stolen information. (3.) U.S. v. United States v. Amit Bhardwaj, Srinivasa Kakkera, and Abbas Saeedi – the defendants, including executives at Silicon Valley tech companies, are alleged to have traded based on inside information about impending corporate mergers obtained by defendant Amit Bhardwaj from his employer. (4.) U.S. v. Brijesh Goel – alleged insider trading in seven M&A deals based on MNPI obtained from an insider at a major international investment bank in New York. The insider, Goel, allegedly received MNPI based on investment bank internal documents about potential investments that bank might make in the deals."
The civl merger case as State of New York, et al., v. Deutsche Telekom AG, et al., 19-cv-5434 (Marrero).
The Buyer criminal case is US v. Buyer, 22-cr-397 (Berman)
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