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- <text id=89TT0352>
- <title>
- Feb. 06, 1989: Business Notes:Insider Trading
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Feb. 06, 1989 Armed America
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 55
- Business Notes
- INSIDER TRADING
- Too Close To the Top
- </hdr><body>
- <p> This affair will not be covered up." So promised Pierre
- Beregovoy, the French Finance Minister, as he announced a
- criminal probe last week into an insider-trading scandal that
- is causing major embarrassment to Francois Mitterrand's
- government. The suspected scheme was uncovered when the U.S.
- Securities and Exchange Commission noticed heavy trading in
- Triangle Industries, a U.S. holding company, in the days prior
- to the Nov. 21 announcement of the company's takeover by
- Pechiney S.A., a French metals conglomerate. Estimated profits
- by insiders who bought early: $10 million.
- </p>
- <p> Tipped off by the SEC, the French Commission on Bourse
- Operations zeroed in on Mitterrand's friends Max Theret, 76,
- and Roger-Patrice Pelat, 70, who profited handsomely from
- purchases of Triangle stock just before the takeover became
- public. Because the Finance Ministry approved the deal before
- it was announced, the information could have leaked from the
- government. That possibility prompted the resignation last month
- of Beregovoy's chief of staff, Alain Boublil, who has denied any
- involvement.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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