Ex-UBS employee convicted on final insider trading charges
Fabiana Abdel-Malek and Walid Choucair to be sentenced later on Thursday
A former UBS compliance officer and her day-trader friend who were both convicted of insider trading this week have been found guilty of a final set of counts.
A jury at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Thursday delivered guilty verdicts on two outstanding counts against Fabiana Abdel-Malek and Walid Choucair, bringing the eight-week trial — and more than four years of investigation and prosecution by the Financial Conduct Authority — to a conclusion.
The pair will be sentenced later on Thursday. Insider trading carries a maximum seven-year sentence.
The case is the FCA’s only big insider trading trial to reach a jury in three years. In that time, suspicious trades ahead of public takeovers, which can be a red flag of insider trading, have risen to their highest level in the UK since the financial crisis. That has led to worries that a lack of high-profile enforcement against insider trading is partly to blame.
The regulator alleged that Abdel-Malek passed confidential tips on deals UBS was working on to Choucair, who would trade using contracts-for-difference, netting himself £1.4m profit between 2013 and 2014. While the prosecution did not claim Abdel-Malek received any money for passing on inside information, it said Choucair in return gave her access to his gilded lifestyle by taking her to Tramp, the club in London’s West End.
The jury already found Abdel-Malek guilty of passing information to Choucair on deals involving Targa, BRE, Kabel Deutschland and Elizabeth Arden. On Thursday, it found that Abdel-Malek passed confidential tips on North Star Realty to Choucair, who went on to make successful trades.
Their convictions follow an earlier first trial, which resulted in a hung jury in December 2018.