Martyn Dodgson imprisoned along with former finance director Andrew Hind for making deals on stockmarkets using classified information
A former Deutsche Bank managing director and an accountant have been sent to prison for “persistent, prolonged, deliberate, dishonest behaviour”, drawing a line under the UK financial watchdog’s eight-and-a-half year insider dealing inquiry.
Martyn Dodgson, a 44-year-old financier who advised the government during the credit crisis, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years on Thursday for his part in an elaborate scam that prosecutors said made more than £6.9m between 2006 and 2010. It is the longest UK prison term handed down for the crime.
Andrew Hind, a 56-year-old former finance director of Topshop, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years at Southwark crown court in London. Both were convicted of conspiracy to insider trade on Monday.
Insider dealing – using confidential information to trade on the stockmarket – carries a maximum seven-year sentence in the UK. But the longest term handed down to date had been four years.
Dodgson and Hind were convicted after a 12-week trial and, as he sentenced them on Thursday, Judge Jeffrey Pegden QC described them as having taken part in “persistent, prolonged, deliberate, dishonest behaviour”.
The investigation, dubbed Operation Tabernula, was a joint operation of the Financial Services Authority – now replaced by the Financial Conduct Authority – and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The investigation, which the FCA has described as its “largest and most complex insider dealing investigation”, cost nearly £14m.
Graeme Shelley, Paul Milsom and Julian Rifat all pleaded guilty at earlier dates. Traders Milsom and Rifat were given sentences of two years and of 19 months with a £100,000 fine respectively, while Shelley was handed a two-year suspended sentence.
The FCA alleged that Dodgson had handed inside information he had discovered through his work to Hind, who was then alleged to have passed it on to two other men to trade on their behalf. It was alleged that the group then split the profits, which the FCA claimed totalled £7.4m.
The three other alleged participants were all acquitted.
Mark Steward, director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said the case involved serious offending over a number of years. “Insider dealing is ever more detectable and provable. And this case shows lengthy terms of imprisonment, not profits, are the real result.”
Dodgson is one of the most senior City figures ever to be charged with insider dealing. He moved to Deutsche Bank in October 2008 as a director and was later promoted. He was also part of a Deutsche Bank team advising the government on its stakes in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group.
The FCA conducted the investigation with the National Crime Agency, whose branch commander Oliver Higgins said: “Dodgson and Hind tried to prevent us from uncovering their insider dealing by using unregistered mobile phones, encoded and encrypted records, and transferring benefit using cash and payments in kind.”
While the sentence is a record for the UK, Elly Proudlock, of law firm WilmerHale’s UK investigations and criminal litigation practice, said it was still substantially shorter than it would have been in the US.
She said: “Although the sentence imposed on Mr Dodgson is the highest yet for insider dealing in the UK, it still falls significantly short of the sort of sentences we see coming out of the US. It will be interesting to see whether the government decides to follow the Bank of England’s recommendation to increase the maximum sentence for market abuse offences to 10 years, which would bring it in line with a number of other economic offences.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/12/ex-deutsche-bank-boss-martyn-dodgson-four-and-a-half-years-for-insider-trading