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Brazil to ask for U.S. help in
insider trading investigation
Brazilian government agency for
stock markets said on Thursday
that it will ask the U.S.
Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) help in the
investigation of the Ipiranga
insider trading case.
Brazil's state-owned oil and gas
company Petrobras and two
partners, petrochemical Braskem
and the distributor Ultra,
announced a deal on Monday to
buy the Ipiranga Group, Brazil's
second largest fuel distributor,
for nearly 4 billion U.S.
dollars in cash and stocks.
And the agency, Commissao de
Valores Mobiliarios (CVM),
suspected that an investment
fund headquartered in the U.S.
state of Delaware, got the
acquisition information from an
insider before the announcement,
according to Marcelo Trindade,
President of the CVM.
The CVM accused that the fund
bought shares of the refinery
run by Ipiranga on last Thursday
and Friday, and sold out after
the acquisition from which it
gained 3.3 million reais (1.6
million U.S. dollars) for values
of those shares increased by 40
percent.
The investor was also accused of
obtaining 970,000 reais
(about470, 800 U.S. dollars) in
the insider trading case.
CVM and the Federal Prosecution
Office got a court injunction on
Thursday, which decided to
freeze four million reais (1.9
million U.S dollars) in accounts
during the investigations. It is
the first time that a court
prevented the withdrawal of
money from stock market
operations in Brazil due to
charges of illegal operation.
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