U.S. charges Spanish man with lying in Potash insider trading probe

By Jonathan Stempel
July 1 (Reuters) - A U.S. grand jury has charged a Spanish
investor with lying to regulators probing insider trading ahead
of an August 2010 hostile bid for Potash Corp of Saskatchewan
Inc POT.TO , even though he had been cleared of charges over
his own trading.
An indictment announced on Friday by federal prosecutors in
Chicago charged Luis Martin-Caro Sanchez, 42, of Madrid, with
one count of obstruction of justice and two counts of perjury.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Sanchez lied in a July
2011 Securities and Exchange Commission deposition when he
denied knowing other people who bought Potash securities before
Potash revealed Anglo-Australian mining company BHP Billiton
Plc's BLT.L BHP.AX unsolicited $38.6 billion takeover bid.
Prosecutors said Sanchez in fact made several calls to two
of those people in the days before the offer became public.
They also said he concealed information about a Swiss bank
account he maintained, and to which a friend had wired 100,000
euros of proceeds from selling Potash stock options.
Prosecutors said the SEC did not discover the account and
the transfer until January 2014, long after a federal judge in
December 2011 dismissed that regulator's own civil insider
trading case against Sanchez.
The Justice Department said it will seek Sanchez's
extradition. He faces up to 20 years in prison on the
obstruction charge.
It is unclear whether Sanchez has a lawyer. A lawyer who
defended him in the SEC case on Friday said he does not
represent Sanchez in the criminal case.
The SEC had accused Sanchez of insider trading after he
allegedly made $496,953, equal to a 1,046 percent return, in
just five days by investing in Potash call options, but the
judge found insufficient evidence.
Potash's share price rose more than 25 percent on Aug. 17,
2010 when it revealed and rejected BHP Billiton's takeover bid.
Canada ultimately blocked the takeover on the ground that it
did not provide a "net benefit" to the country.
The case is U.S. v. Sanchez, U.S. District Court, Northern
District of Illinois, No. 16-cr-00426.