A former CEO of the cloud security agency Qualys has been charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with insider trading. This is the former COO of the company, Amer Deeba, who tipped his family off about expected financial results.
Deeba gave shares in the company to his two brothers in 2005, reports ZDNet. Ten years later, Deeba knew that there would be poor financial results on the horizon, which would cause the value of the company to fall sharply. At that time, Qualys had not yet made an internal forecast for the first quarter of that year.
Deeba then decided to inform his brothers about the failing sales. In addition, he is said to have contacted the company that managed the brothers’ shares, with the message that all shares had to be sold. After the financial results became known, the prices of the shares decreased by 25 percent.
According to SEC, this way Deeba prevented the brothers from losing “over half a million dollars”. Deeba himself made no profit from his actions.
Lawsuit
It is expected that Deeba will not appear in court, but that an agreement will be concluded between the parties. The former COO left his position at Qualys in August. The former CEO is expected to pay $581,170 as a fine, and will not be allowed to hold a senior position in a company reporting to the SEC for the next two years.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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