The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says a former executive at Los Angeles-based Puma Biotechnology Inc. pocketed nearly $1.2 million in illicit profits by illegally trading on confidential information about an experimental breast cancer drug.
Robert Gadimian, who was Puma’s senior director of regulatory affairs, was charged by the SEC Thursday with insider trading for allegedly buying and selling the company’s stock based on details he learned about two clinical trials of an experimental drug called neratinib.
Gadimian allegedly bought Puma securities before the results from the first trial were announced in December 2013 and again before the results of the second trial were announced in July 2014, the SEC said in a statement.
“We allege that Gadimian used valuable confidential information about his employer’s drug trials to trade illegally and enrich himself,” said Antonia Chion, Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.
The SEC complaint says Puma confronted Gadimian after learning about his trades, and he admitted he engaged in the illegal trading because of “greed.”
He allegedly altered his trading records before providing them to Puma for its internal investigation, deleting certain trades in Puma securities and renumbering the pages of the altered documents to hide his changes, according to the SEC. Gadimian was fired in October 2014.
The SEC said it has been assisted in its probe by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts, the FBI and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts on Thursday also announced criminal charges against Gadimian.
—City News Service