By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) – A former senior analyst at asset manager Janus Henderson and four others on Friday pleaded not guilty in a London court to being part of a 15-month insider dealing and money laundering conspiracy.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) alleges Redinel Korfuzi misused confidential, price sensitive information to trade in 49 companies through accounts held by his co-defendants between December 2019 and March 2021.
The prosecution is significant after the FCA, responding to questions about how was tackling market abuse, said last year it was monitoring more than 30 million transactions and 100 million order reports daily to detect and deter wrongdoing – but that this did not always involve criminal action.
Standing in the glass-surrounded dock at London’s Southwark Crown Court, Korfuzi, Oerta Korfuzi, Iva Spahiu, Rogerio de Aquino and Dema Almeziad, aged between 34 and 61, each pleaded not guilty to one charge of insider dealing and one charge of money laundering.
The FCA alleges that the group, which used contracts for difference (CFD) derivatives to place bets on share price movements, made around 1.5 million pounds ($1.92 million) and banked about 170 cash deposits, worth about 200,000 pounds, in the process.
A 16-week trial has been pencilled in for early 2025.
The two men and three women had indicated not guilty pleas at a Westminster Magistrates’ Court hearing in January.
Those convicted in Britain of money laundering face a jail term of up to 14 years and a fine. The maximum sentence for insider dealing is seven years for offences committed before November, 2021. Thereafter, it has been raised to 10 years.
Janus Henderson, which is not under investigation, has said it treats actual or suspected misuse of confidential information with the “greatest seriousness”.
The FCA has said the asset manager has cooperated fully with its investigation.
($1 = 0.7822 pounds)
(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley; editing by Jason Neely and Louise Heavens)
