Leonie Lamont | SMH | December 7, 2011
John Hartman, the youngest person jailed in Australia for insider trading, will be released from jail early after a successful appeal to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.
Hartman's original four year jail term and three-year non-parole period was quashed by the appeal judges, who re-sentenced him to a jail term of three years, and non-parole period of 15 months - meaning he will be released from jail on March 1 next year.
Hartman was only 20 when he started work as an equities dealer with Orion Asset Management in 2006. Between 2007 and 2009 he passed inside information to a friend, and traded on his own account in contracts for difference. He used his inside knowledge of pending Orion trades to engage in ''front running'', making nearly $1.6 million in profits.
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Pleading guilty to the charges, Hartman has been in jail since December last year.
Justice Anthony Whealy, who during the appeal hearing said there needed to be general deterrence for ''21 year old masters of the universe'', reiterated the sentiment in this morning's judgement.
The appeal judges did not agree that Hartman's youth and relative immaturity had any role to play in the downgrading of general deterrence.
''The applicant was operating in the adult sphere of business and commerce in every respect, and of course he was himself an educated and worldly young adult in every sense of the word.
''The court cannot lose sight of the need to deter young adults from taking the significant financial advantages offered by the contemporary business world in circumstances where, at the same time, they reject the legal and moral constraints properly imposed upon their commercial behaviour.''
The court did take into account Hartman's depressed mental condition, and pathological gambling addiction, in redetermining the sentence
Showing posts with label Insider Trading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Insider Trading. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Prosecution claims insider trader's sentence excessive
Andrew Main | The Australian | 10 November 2011
CONVICTED insider trader John Hartman was given an excessive sentence in December by Justice Peter McClellan, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal was told yesterday.
Surprisingly, it was the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions' barrister, Robert Beech-Jones SC, who made that pitch yesterday, and not Hartman's barrister Tim Game SC.
The CDPP prosecuted the case on behalf of regulator the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, which has been trying to encourage defendants to plead guilty to insider trading charges rather than tie up the courts for long trials. Such guilty pleas attract shorter sentences.
Mr Beech-Jones told the judges the prosecution believed there had been an error in Justice McClellan's approach to sentencing in that he did not give a sufficient discount for the extent of Hartman's co-operation with the authorities in the lead-up to him being sentenced on December 2 last year.
He pleaded guilty to 19 charges of insider trading by "front running" institutional orders and six charges of passing information between March 2006 and January 2009.
Justice McClellan, Chief Judge at Common Law of the NSW Supreme Court, sentenced Hartman to 4 1/2 years' jail with a three-year minimum, the longest sentence of its type in recent years. Hartman, who had been a $350,000 a year fund manager at Orion Asset Management, appealed against the sentence on December 29 last year. He is eligible for parole on December 1, 2013.
One of the three judges hearing the appeal yesterday, Justice Michael Adams, expressed concern that while Hartman was aware what he had been doing was wrong, the depression he was suffering produced compulsive behaviour he had not been able to control.
The other judges on the appeal were justices Anthony Whealy, who chaired the panel, and Megan Latham.
CONVICTED insider trader John Hartman was given an excessive sentence in December by Justice Peter McClellan, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal was told yesterday.
Surprisingly, it was the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions' barrister, Robert Beech-Jones SC, who made that pitch yesterday, and not Hartman's barrister Tim Game SC.
The CDPP prosecuted the case on behalf of regulator the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, which has been trying to encourage defendants to plead guilty to insider trading charges rather than tie up the courts for long trials. Such guilty pleas attract shorter sentences.
Mr Beech-Jones told the judges the prosecution believed there had been an error in Justice McClellan's approach to sentencing in that he did not give a sufficient discount for the extent of Hartman's co-operation with the authorities in the lead-up to him being sentenced on December 2 last year.
He pleaded guilty to 19 charges of insider trading by "front running" institutional orders and six charges of passing information between March 2006 and January 2009.
Justice McClellan, Chief Judge at Common Law of the NSW Supreme Court, sentenced Hartman to 4 1/2 years' jail with a three-year minimum, the longest sentence of its type in recent years. Hartman, who had been a $350,000 a year fund manager at Orion Asset Management, appealed against the sentence on December 29 last year. He is eligible for parole on December 1, 2013.
One of the three judges hearing the appeal yesterday, Justice Michael Adams, expressed concern that while Hartman was aware what he had been doing was wrong, the depression he was suffering produced compulsive behaviour he had not been able to control.
The other judges on the appeal were justices Anthony Whealy, who chaired the panel, and Megan Latham.
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