January 9, 2020
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He tapped a safe full of cash to pay off corrupt stock tipsters and used phony invoices for artwork sales to mask some payments. He stole information from his banker girlfriend, placed stories with journalists and disguised illegal trades by using other people to make share purchases.On Wednesday, Marc Demane Debih, a failed Swiss entrepreneur, revealed to a New York jury the secret methods he used to earn $70 million in illegal profit from a global insider-trading network. Testifying for U.S. prosecutors, he is the government’s star witness in the trial of Telemaque Lavidas, the first to face a U.S. jury after a multiyear government probe of a wider alleged conspiracy.“We agree (with) each other to share inside information and rumors,” Demane Debih said about his relationship with one member of the network. “If he got inside information, he would give it to me. I would trade it for him.”Demane Debih has been jailed since his 2018 arrest in Serbia and pleaded guilty in October to 38 insider-trading charges. Prosecutors say he was a key player in a sprawling network of contacts on three continents that shared information about pending corporate takeovers and paid off tipsters -- from executives to bankers to an art collector.The 49-year-old Demane Debih, who has agreed to cooperate with authorities to reduce his sentence, testified that Lavidas’s tips helped produce profit on shares of Boston-based Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc.Lavidas got inside information from his father, who was an Ariad board member at the time, and passed it along to Georgios Nikas, a Greek businessman who owned restaurants in New York, according to prosecutors. Demane Debih, who described Nikas as a friend, said he never got tips directly from Lavidas....MORE
And, also Jan. 9:
Goldman Sachs Begins Probe After Insider-Trading Testimony
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is reviewing a claim from a confessed member of an international insider-trading ring that he stole confidential information a decade ago from his former girlfriend, who is now a managing director at the firm, to trade on.Marc Demane Debih, the government’s star witness, testified Wednesday in a Manhattan insider-trading trial that he got data on three proposed corporate acquisitions in the mining industry from Zeynep Yenel, who was then his girlfriend.“We are aware of the statements made during the testimony,” Goldman Sachs spokeswoman Nicole Sharp said in a statement Thursday. “We are taking them seriously and conducting our own review.”
Demane Debih testified in the trial of Telemaque Lavidas, who is charged with passing secret information from his father, a former director at a Boston-based drug company, to Georgios Nikas, a Greek businessman who owns restaurants in New York. Demane Debih, a former Swiss trader, pleaded guilty to 38 criminal counts in October. He’s cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of reducing his time behind bars....MORE
