FT: ‘Convicted Inside Trader George Soros.’ Get Used to Saying That
George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund manager, has lost a case at the European Court of Human Rights to have his criminal conviction for insider dealing quashed.
The failed appeal in a 4-3 decision by the Strasbourg-based court is the latest twist in a nine-year battle by the 81-year-old Mr Soros to clear his name following his conviction in France in 2002.
The French criminal case hinged on trades that the Hungary-born investor had executed 14 years earlier in the stock of Société Générale that reaped his hedge fund, the Quantum Fund, $2.9m in profits.
Mr Soros was found by the court in 2002 to have had inside knowledge about the intentions of a group of super-wealthy French investors – the “golden granddads” – to bid for the bank.
Although the bid failed, Mr Soros’s fund profited by buying shares before – and selling after – the group’s intentions became public and resulted in a spike in SocGen’s share price.
Mr Soros was fined €2.2m (£1.9m), later reduced to €940,507 on appeal.
At the time, Mr Soros described the guilty verdict as a “gift to my enemies”.
It’s about time! Great article.
Gee, don’t we have an extradition treaty with France. No? What do you think, maybe we can trade Sorros for Polanski, the child molester and child rapist and favorite Hollywood movie director? And why haven’t we extradited the dude before this? What is this, we pay these people at State to sit around on their butts and kiss up to our enemies when we have a perfectly good, extraditable white collar criminal running around making billions to pay for protestors to close down the Brooklyn Bridge? Truly, the idiots are in charge.