Insider lawsuit claims AACo director leaked to UK billionaire

afr.com:

A director of beef giant AACo leaked board conversations about a devastating hit from the Queensland floods to Premier League club-owner and billionaire Joe Lewis, according to an insider trading lawsuit.

Mr Lewis, whose private company owns almost half of AACo, then passed on the information to one of his personal pilots and said they should “trade as soon as possible”, the lawsuit filed by New York southern district attorney Damian Williams alleged.

Billionaire Joe Lewis will defend the DA’s charges. AP

The pilot and another private pilot tried to offload their stock in the over-the-counter market, but could not sell in time, the indictment states. “Just wish the boss would have given us a little earlier heads up,” the pilot allegedly said.

The allegations were outlined as part of what Mr Williams alleged, in a video presentation, was a “brazen insider trading scheme”.

But a US lawyer for Mr Lewis rejected the allegations in a statement to The Australian Financial Review on Wednesday.

“The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment. Mr Lewis has come to the US voluntarily to answer these ill-conceived charges, and we will defend him vigorously in court,” said counsel David M. Zornow, of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

The indictment states that Mr Lewis had “on numerous occasions” between 2019 and 2021 “misappropriated inside information from publicly traded companies in which he was a large investor”.

He then allegedly used that information to “tip or direct the trading of his friends and associates, including his personal pilots, as well as his personal assistants, romantic partners, and other acquaintances,