A 27-year-old Indian-origin former security analyst at J P Morgan Securities and two of his friends have been charged in the US with trading on inside information about technology deals that netted nearly $7,00,000 in illicit profits. Ashish Aggarwal of San Francisco, Shahriyar Bolandian 26, and Kevan Sadigh, 28 — both of Los Angeles — surrendered on Wednesday to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The trio are named in an indictment that charges each with one count of conspiracy to commit
securities and tender offer fraud, 13 substantive counts of securities fraud, 13 substantive counts of tender offer fraud and three substantive counts of wire fraud.
They pleaded not guilty before US Magistrate Judge Patrick Walsh of the Central District of California. Aggarwal graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree and was working as an investment banking analyst in the San Francisco office of J P Morgan Securities from June, 2011 to June, 2013.
According to the indictment, through his employment at J P Morgan, Aggarwal allegedly obtained material, inside information about two J P Morgan-advised deals: Integrated Device Technology’s planned acquisition of PLX Technology in 2012 and salesforce.com’s acquisition of ExactTarget in 2013. He repeatedly communicated with Bolandian, his friend since college, in the days and weeks leading up to public announcements about the deals. Bolandian, in turn, shared the information with Sadigh, also a friend.
Rajat Gupta files appeal against conviction for insider trading
Pursuing yet another legal recourse, India-born former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta has filed a fresh appeal in a US court against a federal judge’s ruling that had denied his bid to throw out his two-year sentence and conviction on insider trading charges. Gupta’s lawyer Gary Naftalis filed the fresh appeal in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit yesterday against the July 2, <g data-gr-id="26">2015</g> ruling by a District Court.