Konstantin Vishnyak was found not guilty after jurors deliberated for just over 3 hours.
Konstantin Vishnyak, a former VTB Capital Plc banker who deleted his WhatsApp messages “under the nose of the police,” was acquitted by a London jury, dealing a blow to the Conduct Authority’s search for insider information. Financial
Vishnyak was found not guilty after jurors deliberated for just over 3 hours and the judge released him immediately. FCA prosecutors had alleged that the 42-year-old banker removed the request knowing it could be relevant to an insider trading investigation.
But Vishnyak insisted that he had deleted the messages because he feared he would be dragged into a “political scandal” if his links to a Russian suspect in a British murder investigation became known.
The verdict leaves the FCA empty-handed. While the agency dropped the insider trading investigation against Vishnyak and two other suspects, it had pursued the lesser charge of removing the texts, a first time.
In a statement, the FCA said it was “disappointed with the outcome, but respects the verdict. We will take action whenever the evidence we need is altered or destroyed.”
The former banker was arrested in September 2018 at his home by authorities suspicious of his negotiation in six companies that obtained takeover bids. Vishnyak managed to remove the WhatsApp application in his room before handing the second of his two iPhones over to a police officer.
“You erase WhatsApp under the nose of the police. You remove the trail of the FCA in the interview,” said Rachel Barnes, a lawyer for the agency, during questioning. “This is taking a risk, right?”
More embarrassing
Vishnyak’s lawyer told the jury that the content of the messages was “much more embarrassing.”
The conversations contained correspondence with Andrei Lugovoi, a politician wanted by British police for the poisoning of former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was given a fatal dose of radioactive polonium in his tea at a London restaurant in 2006.
When questioned, Vishnyak said he was concerned that he and his family would be put on a watch list and that his home would be heard. He feared becoming a “bargaining chip” in the context of deteriorating relations between Russia and the United Kingdom.
“British juries do not conduct their business under suspicion,” said Henry Milner, Vishnyak’s lawyer. “My client’s case was that his removals were private matters, nothing to do with stocks or insider trading, and the prosecution could not prove otherwise.”
VTB, after the ruling, emphasized that the “FCA has confirmed” that the Vishnyak investigation had nothing to do with the Russian bank.
Vishynak was suspected of trading advice he received from a group of Moscow friends, including his best man at his wedding. Vishnyak, who had left VTB at the time, earned around 3.78 million pounds ($ 4.83 million) trading the six shares in question, the FCA said.
In its insider trading case, the FCA targeted only the six stocks out of around 100 that Vishnyak had traded, his attorney Patrick Gibbs said.
A tip from the Moscow group came during a ski vacation in Italy, Vishnyak said in an interview with the FCA. Vishnyak bought shares after one of the people “started talking about the information he had received.”
The next day there was an acquisition announcement, he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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