Insider-Trading Fugitive Ordered to Pay Back $2.1 Million

(Bloomberg) -- A fugitive luxury jeweler was ordered by a London court to pay back 1.6 million pounds ($2.1 million) over his role in a U.K. insider-trading case.

Richard Baldwin, who is still on the run, must pay the confiscation order or face a further eight years in prison, a judge said Monday according to the Financial Conduct Authority. He was convicted and sentenced last year in his absence on charges relating to a wider insider-trading probe, code-named Operation Tabernula, that resulted in the conviction of a Deutsche Bank AG broker.

The jeweler was originally sentenced to more than five years in jail after the court heard “compelling evidence” of “extremely sophisticated” money laundering, the judge said at the time.

Baldwin absconded and didn't enter a plea before he was tried.

Former Deutsche Bank broker Martyn Dodgson and Andrew Hind, an accountant, were jailed for their four-year conspiracy in 2016. Baldwin ran a luxury watch business in London's Marylebone area and helped launder the proceeds of Dodgson and Hind's insider trading, using off-shore companies, bank accounts and false invoices, according to the FCA, which prosecuted the case.

Tabernula, Latin for “little tavern,” was once the most complex insider-trading investigation in British history. Before the 2008 financial crisis, no one had ever been prosecuted for using insider tips while trading. The FCA has had fewer successes since then and is facing a court appeal of most recent convictions.

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