Word: scandalous
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Phone taps, FBI surveillance, confidential informants - it's the stuff of major mafia investigations and Law & Order reruns. But they're also the tactics used by federal authorities against a slew of dark-suited desk jockeys accused in Wall Street's largest insider-trading scandal in decades. Authorities say billionaire hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, and 19 others illegally used secret information about public companies to inform investments that yielded some $60 million in profits over the past several years. The defendants, who also include traders, lawyers and executives at firms such...
Insider trading hasn't always been a crime. On the contrary, it was once considered logical and efficient to let any competitive advantage inform decision-making in the free market - a position many economic libertarians continue to embrace today. What some consider to be America's first insider-trading scandal took place shortly after the nation's birth; a former Assistant Treasury Secretary named William Duer capitalized on his government connections to make bets on the country's debt. His investments eventually soured, however, and Duer's bankruptcy brought down much of New York's economy in 1792; he died...
These days, you don't have to work on Wall Street to get entangled in an insider-trading scandal - just ask Martha Stewart. The homemaking guru spent five months in prison in 2004 after a series of events triggered by her sale of $228,000 in shares of biomedical firm ImClone Systems, the day before its value plunged 15%. Thanks to a 1997 Supreme Court ruling, even those who lack a connection to a company cannot trade on inside information if they know it is meant to remain confidential. (ImClone was run by Stewart's friend, Sam Waksal.) Ultimately, Stewart...
...Even the President has come under scrutiny for his slow response to the scandal. A week after the President appointed the team to investigate the allegations, he, too, voiced his support for the anticorruption team he formed five years ago. "Our anticorruption commission will continue to be given a role in the fight against corruption because they have proven to be successful and effective in the fight against corruption," he told TIME in an exclusive interview on Nov. 2. "Even though they are currently having some problems, they remain an important part of our fight against corruption." The President admitted...
...checkered life history was hotly debated on Catholic blogs and religion websites like Beliefnet.com. Right-wing Catholics lobbied the Boston archdiocese to refuse the Kennedy family a church funeral. Robert Royal of the Faith & Reason Institute called O'Malley's decision to go ahead with the Mass a "grave scandal" on a par with the sexual-abuse crisis...