Ex-UK trader faces more jail time if fails to pay confiscation order

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LONDON (Reuters) – Damian Clarke, a former stock trader at Schroders Investment Management, must pay 350,000 pounds within three months or face three more years in jail for insider dealing, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Monday.

Clarke was sent to prison for two years in June 2016 after pleading guilty to nine counts of insider dealing.

On Monday, Southwark Crown Court in London made a confiscation order for 350,000 pounds against Clarke, the FCA said in a statement. In recent years, the FCA has sought to crack down harder on insider dealing.

“Mr Clarke engaged in a systematic and long-running criminal enterprise in order to make significant illegal gains for himself and his family,” said Mark Steward, the FCA’s executive director of enforcement.

“The message should now be clear that insider dealers are increasingly likely to be caught and will be made to fully account for their misconduct,” he said.

The FCA said the total is more than the profits generated from the nine counts of insider dealing spanning nine years and involving trading on confidential information on mergers and acquisitions before they were made public.

“As a result of the extent of his offending, he is deemed to have a criminal lifestyle, which enables the court to assume that the profits made from other non-indicted trading within a defined period also represent the proceeds of crime,” the FCA said.

Clarke benefited to the tune of 719,658 pounds from his criminal conduct but it was agreed that the value of his interest in various assets amounted to 350,000 pounds, the FCA said.

Andrea Clarke of CCW Solicitors, said Damian Clarke, who is no longer in prison, was pleased the matter had now been resolved and that he would ensure payment was made, adding that no other family member had been involved.

Even if Clarke ends up serving an extra three years, he would still have to pay the sum.

The FCA obtained a restraint order in January 2013 on assets owned by Clarke.

In April 2015, Pardip Saini was sentenced to 528 days for failing to pay a confiscation order for 464,564 pounds after a conviction for insider dealing.

Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Louise Heavens and Edmund Blair

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