By Sam Jones in London and Stanley Pignal in Brussels
George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund manager, has lost a case at the European Court of Human Rights to have his criminal conviction for insider dealing quashed.
The failed appeal at the Strasbourg-based court is the latest twist in a nine-year battle by the 81-year-old Mr Soros to clear his name following his conviction in France in 2002.
The French criminal case hinged on trades that the Hungary-born investor had executed 14 years earlier in the stock of Soci?t? G?n?rale that reaped his hedge fund, the Quantum Fund, $2.9m in profits.
Mr Soros was found by the 2002 court to have had inside knowledge about the intentions of a group of super-wealthy French investors – the ?golden granddads? – to bid for the bank. Although the bid failed, Mr Soros?s fund profited by buying shares before – and selling after – the group?s intentions became public. Mr Soros was fined 2.2m euros ($2.9m), later reduced to 940,507 euros on appeal.
Mr Soros had based his initial appeal to Strasbourg on an argument that French insider-trading laws in the late 1980s were too vague for him to know that he was in breach of them.
In its decision, the ECHR conceded that ?the wording of the statutes was not always precise? but said that Mr Soros, as a ?famous institutional investor . . . could not have been unaware that his decision to invest . . . entailed the risk that he might be committing the offence of insider trading?.
Mr Soros?s lawyers lamented the ECHR?s close decision, pointing out that even the former French market regulator, the Commission des Op?rations de Bourse, had found France?s insider trading laws too ill-defined to warrant a civil case
? The Financial Times Limited 2011