Chap beats rap in WhatsApp zap flap: Russian banker walks from insider trading case after deleting software
- Reference: 1601535193
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/01/whatsapp_fca_evidence/
- Source link:
Konstantin Vishnyak, 42, was cleared by Southwark Crown Court in London, England, of destroying documents relevant to a now-discontinued investigation into insider trading.
Prosecutors had sought the conviction after Vishnyak deleted the app and its encrypted chat logs from his smartphone shortly after being arrested in 2018.
It [1]was reported that Vishnyak, formerly of VTB Capital, deleted the app and messages from his iPhone – one of two handsets he gave to police – not out of fear of an investigation into insider trading, but rather in an effort to conceal his friendship with Andrei Lugovoi, the Russian politician wanted in connection with the polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority, which brought the destruction of documents charge against Vishnyak in a first-of-its-kind prosecution, expressed its dismay with the verdict.
Amazon bean-counter, her husband, father-in-law cough up $2.6m after SEC collars them on insider-trading rap [2]READ MORE
"The FCA is disappointed with the outcome, but respects the verdict," the watchdog said in [3]a brief statement this week. "We will take action whenever evidence we need is tampered with or destroyed."
Last year, when bringing the charge under Blighty's Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000, the FCA claimed Vishnyak knew the app would be of interest to investigators looking into possible insider trading.
"Mr Vishnyak was under investigation by the FCA for suspected insider dealing offences," [4]the FCA said at the time. "The FCA alleges Mr Vishnyak deleted the WhatsApp application on his mobile phone after he was required to provide it as part of the investigation."
Vishnyak, meanwhile, maintained that he was not trying to hide any evidence of insider trading, but rather that he just wanted to protect his personal information from prying eyes unrelated to the investigation.
"I wasn’t thinking about that," Vishnyak was quoted as saying. "I was deleting my private information. This has nothing to do with shares." ®
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[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-30/hitting-delete-was-better-than-the-panic-button-for-ex-banker
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/29/amazon_insider_trading_sec/
[3] https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/konstantin-vishnyak-found-not-guilty-destroying-documents
[4] https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/konstantin-vishnyak-appears-court-destruction-documents-offence
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I have to say,
Indeed - I suspect the "destruction of evidence" charge has to come with proof that there was evidence relevant to the case in the first hand. But then if what he wanted to do was conceal evidence of a relationship with Lugovoi, using it as his excuse kinda blows that cover...
That's ok then.
So if I was a drug dealer running a county lines system and I said "sorry officer I've just got to delete my drug-dealing phones because I'm concerned that my friendship with an alleged murder may be seen by the authorities", that would be ok too?
When you hear stories like this they almost smell of something nasty in the system ...
Re: That's ok then.
"When you hear stories like this they almost smell of something nasty in the system ..."
It's a Crown Court, so it would be a jury that found him not guilty.
Well corrected, but there is definitely something very nasty in our system though.
Was the phone private or company?
If it was a private phone then the data would be covered by privacy regulations and I think he could not be forced to provide access: just because the app could be used for criminal purposes doesn't mean that it isn't protected by privacy statutes.
Of course the government will use this as another reason to get encrypted messaging apps banned, along with terrorists and pedos, we can now add Russian bankers to the list of bad people who use the apps to avoid justice.
I have to say,
if they gave him the opportunity to destroy evidence rather than simply seizing his phone(s)/computer(s) without notifying him, then they were surely failing to attend to the basics. Asking someone nicely for a piece of rope to hang them with is unlikely to be productive.