AML/CFT: UK's FSA adds money laundering charges to insider trading charges
The UK's Financial Services Authority is showing its teeth. In an insider trading case against Richard Anthony Joseph, it has added charges of money laundering.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has charged Richard Anthony Joseph, with eight counts of insider dealing and two counts of money laundering.
Joseph, who is 42 years of age appeared before the City of London Magistrates Court on Wednesday 11th January 2012.
Joseph was sent for trial and will next appear at Southwark Crown Court on 6 March 2012. He is on conditional bail.
The charges follow on from the arrest of Joseph on 19 May 2010.
Insider dealing is a criminal offence that is punishable by a fine or up to seven years imprisonment.
Limited reporting restrictions apply under the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The reasons for the restrictions have not been made public.The general principle is that reports which "which create a substantial risk that the course of public justice will be seriously impeded or prejudice" must not be published. That, generally, means that information that might tend to undermine a continuing investigation or to influence a jury must not be published. This should be compared with the "trial by media" that is common in the USA e.g. in the Madoff and Stanford cases.
The interest in the case is not in the insider dealing, per se but in the addition of charges of money laundering. Although the FSA has had the power to prosecute this offence for some time, it has rarely, if ever, used it.
It is also important because the FSA is using the criminal courts not the civil penalty regime. As a result, there is no room for the "without admitting or denying the charges" let-out so common in the USA unless the prosecution is marked "not proceeded with," a prospect that, at this stage, appears unlikely.
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