A hedge fund trader has been sent to jail and fined for insider dealing offences in a case brought by UK regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Julian Rifat, formerly a senior execution trader and portfolio strategist at Moore Capital Management, was sentenced to 19 months imprisonment and fined £100,000 at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty. He was also ordered to pay costs of almost £160,000.
The conviction is the 27th achieved by the FCA and its predecessor, the Financial Services Authority, since 2009.
Rifat has passed on information obtained as part of his role at Moore to Graeme Shelley, a broker at Novum Securities, who then traded to benefit the pair. Shekkey and a third associate, Paul Milson, formerly a trader at Legal and General Insurance Management, pleaded guilty to insider dealing in March 2014 and March 2013 respectively.
The FCA’s acting director of enforcement and market oversight, Georgina Philippou, said: “He [Rifat] was privy to highly sensitive information at the heart of some of the largest transactions in the UK financial markets during the latter half of 2009.
“Mr Rifat’s behaviour exploited financial markets during a particularly challenging time just as they were taking steps to recover from the 2008 crisis. The smooth running of our financial markets requires market professionals to play by the rules – Mr Rifat knew the rules, but he abused them for his own benefit.”
The sentence is the third to be handed out as part of the FCA’s Operation Tabernula, which is its largest and most complex insider dealing investigation to date.