The biggest case of insider dealing ever uncovered is now spreading to implicate more and more people.
Now that some of the most respected institutions in corporate banking have been implicated in - and some destroyed by - dubious ethical and financial practices, it should come as no surprise that the same foul odour of corruption is now being detected lingering in the corridors of smaller companies on Wall Street.
Thus, the emergence of the biggest case of insider dealing ever uncovered, now spreading to implicate more and more people.
The Guardian's Will Hutton likens it to a poisonous melange of the worst characters in popular fiction, engaged in
a seedy world of secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones.
an insider-trading network brazenly swapping information about planned corporate mergers and taking such elaborate steps to avoid detection that authorities likened the methods to those used by narcotics traffickers
a breed of private investment firms responsible for heavy daily trading that operate largely out of Wall Street's limelight.
The case in question all began with New York hedge fund Galleon Group, and its Sri Lankan head Raj Rajaratnam. It has now sprawled out to ensnare shady characters like "Octopussy", and to cast a cloud over some executives at IBM, Intel and AMD. ( Bloomberg has the rogue's gallery as uncovered so far.)
That insider trading is considered standard operating procedure by many in the financial industry is no secret. The hard part has been to put a finger on how widespread it is or just how big the deals are that divert huge profits to the crooked, before average investors can even get a look-in.
What is now becoming apparent is that, in a world of private hedge funds, government deregulation and rock star bankers operating in a culture of impunity, fraud and duplicity are everywhere.
Hutton calls it the "ugly face of the investment world", where "the people you trust to act on your behalf turn out to be defrauding you."
Mostly, his article is spot on, highlighting how base the characters that operate on Wall Street and in the City of London have become, and how worthless the concepts of "blue chip" and "gilt-edged" are in a financial world where astronomical wealth is available to anyone who is thick-skinned enough to just reach out and steal it.
