Prosecutor Dropping Case Against Ex-SAC Capital Manager

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Prosecutor Dropping Case Against Ex-SAC Capital Manager

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Oct 22, 2015, 4:18 PM ET

A federal prosecutor in New York City says a recent appeals court ruling on insider trading has led him to request charges be dismissed against a former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager convicted at trial.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara made the announcement Thursday regarding the case against Michael Steinberg. Steinberg worked at the Stamford, Connecticut-based company founded by billionaire businessman Steven A. Cohen. The prosecutor says his office also would seek to dismiss cases against six cooperating witnesses who pleaded guilty.

Bharara says to continue the prosecutions after a December decision by a federal appeals court in Manhattan would not be in the interests of justice. The appeals court had further defined what constitutes insider trading.

Defense attorney Barry Berke says the innocent Steinberg was subjected to a wrongful prosecution.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/prosecutor-dropping-case-sac-capital-manager-34662153

[DemReadingDU]

1. Too Complicated to Prosecute????

10/21/15 Has It Become Impossible to Prosecute White-Collar Crime?
Financial crimes might be too complicated to take to trial.

For close watchers of the interactions between the Justice Department and the financial industry, the mistrial in the Dewey & LeBoeuf case was about more than just the fact that a handful of jurors were too overwhelmed by the evidence presented to reach a verdict. The mistrial, after a four months in court and 22 days of deliberations, hints at a much deeper problem: Perhaps most financial crime has reached a level of such complexity that it's beyond the reach of the law.

Since the financial crisis sent the economy into a spiral, leading to millions of lost jobs and foreclosed homes, there have been public cries to see bankers responsible for the frauds underpinning the crisis put in jail. This would have fit with the pattern of how things have gone since the beginning of time: Booms and bubbles led to market collapses and crises, followed by the tightening of regulations and criminal prosecutions. In the case of 2008, however, the crackdown never really came. Only one high-level banker went to prison, and the Justice Department pursued enormous multi-billion-dollar civil penalties against big banks, rather than charges against individuals.

The U.S. attorney general, the Security and Exchange Commission, Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and others have taken enormous amounts of criticism for this. Still, several years later, many high profile attempts to charge financial criminals have failed, raising the question of whether the crimes themselves have evolved to a point where the resources designed to combat them are hopelessly out of sync.

more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/has-it-become-impossible-to-prosecute-white-collar-crime-