A former Credit Suisse investment banker convicted of insider trading was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Friday by a judge who said Wall Street professionals were failing to understand that it was a serious crime to cheat in the markets.
“It’s going on too much and people have to realize that if they do get caught, they’re going to pay,” US District Judge Robert Patterson said as he sentenced Hafiz Muhammad Zubair Naseem for feeding tips to a banker in Pakistan who made US$7.8 million in illegal profits.
“A lot of people aren’t caught and should be caught,” Patterson said as he also ordered Naseem to forfeit US$7.5 million.
Naseem was convicted in February of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and 28 counts of insider trading for providing the tips for up to two years while he worked in the Global Energy Group at the Manhattan offices of Credit Suisse Securities USA LLC.
Prosecutors had asked that Naseem, 37, be sentenced to between eight years and 10 years in prison. Judges usually levy sentences at the lower end of the guidelines.
Defense lawyers had argued that Naseem deserved leniency because he had never before committed a crime, because he had not received profits and because he had personal circumstances that included an ill mother and a young daughter with cerebral palsy.
Patterson, though, said he had become frustrated with what seemed like a cavalier attitude toward insider trading.
“It’s been prosecuted before and doesn’t seem to deter people very much,” he said.
He also said white-collar crimes seem to be carried out at all ages, while violent crimes seem to result mainly in the arrests of young people.
“When people get older, people lose their pizazz or whatever to do violent crimes,” he said. “But you’re just as greedy when you get old as when you’re younger.”
Michael Bachner, a lawyer for Naseem, vowed to appeal.
“The sentence is excessive, unnecessary to serve the interests of justice and we respectfully disagree,” he said.
Still a fugitive in the case is Ajaz Rahim, the head of investment banking at Faysal Bank in Pakistan, where he was accused of making the illegal trades in 2005 and 2006. Prosecutors say Rahim and Naseem once worked together in Pakistan and remained friends afterward.
Prosecutors said Naseem had received US$200,000 in wire transfers that appeared to be related to illegal profits, despite Naseem’s claims that the money came from his father.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by