For most people, the concept of insider trading likely conjures
up thoughts of public companies and famous U.S. cases. For
instance, Jeff Skilling, the CEO of Enron, being sentenced to 24
years in prison and fined $45 million for insider trading and other
crimes relating to the Enron fraud. Or Martha Stewart getting
tipped off by her broker and selling $230,000 of stock in ImClone
the day before the company publicly disclosed that it failed to get
FDA approval for its new drug.
In Canada, we have securities regulators who regularly prosecute
insider trading cases – check it out, they are easy to find
on the enforcement pages on the websites of securities commissions
across the country. Those prosecutions are done under securities
legislation and generally involve an “insider” buying
or selling securities on an exchange with information that has not
been disclosed to the public and that is material to the price of
the security. What many people don't realize is that
