Legal & General Share News (LGEN)

(ShareCast News) - Five day traders, including brokers at Deutsche Bank and Panmure Gordon, have been accused of making more than £7m from the biggest ever insider trading case in the City of London.Prosecutors representing the Financial Conduct Authority at Southwark Crown Court since last Monday said the five corporate brokers shared inside information between November 2006 and March 2010 on six stocks, Sky, Legal & General, Scottish and Newcastle, Paragon Group, Just Retirement and nCipher.The five accused are Martyn Dodgson, 44, who was managing director of Deutsche Bank's corporate broking team; accountant Andrew Hind, 55; private day trader Benjamin Anderson, 71; Iraj Parvizi, 49, a former director of Aria Capital; and Andrew Harrison, 46, an ex colleague of Dogson's who had moved to stockbroker Panmure; who all allegedly shared inside information during the period.Mark Ellison, barrister for the prosecution, told the jury that information was passed from Dodgson and Harrison to Hind, who then contacted Parvizi and Anderson to trade on it, Bloomberg reported from the court.Ellison said that while the group did a "pretty good job of hiding what they were doing," it was obvious from the patterns of contact they had conspired to profit on non-public information.The FCA found notes from the trading that apparently showed more than £0.5m was given by the men to Hind, who then split the money with Dodgson.Despite his long career in the banking industry - including as an advisor to the treasury in its bail out of Royal Bank of Scotland, and senior roles in other banks including Cazenove and Lehman Brothers - the prosecution last week alleged Dodgson became obsessed with using his position in the City to build a £5m personal fortune, the Daily Mail reported.FCA rules dictate that senior bank employees must seek permission from their employers before investing in shares, but the court heard that Dodgson had never sought any authorisation through his time at Deutsche Bank.The City watchdog, which has previously secured 14 convictions in relation to insider dealing, charged Dodgson and three others in 2012 as part of Operation Tabernula, the FSA's largest and most complex insider dealing investigation to date, which was carried out jointly with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).The operation was carried out by 143 FSA personnel together with officers from SOCA as part of a joint investigation that began in late 2007.One defendant has been given leave to avoid standing in the case due to ill health, while the Financial Times reported that QCs threatened the case two years ago when the UK government cut the amount of fees they would receive as part of reforms to the Legal Aid budget.