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Two former bond brokers for broker-dealer Sterne Agee and an ex-PM overseeing fixed income investing for the NYS Retirement Fund were named as defendants in a pay-to-play scheme that had the brokers plying former fixed income portfolio manager with plenty of partying and prostitutes in exchange for millions of dollars in fixed income commission fees, according to the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara.
The indictment says that there was an agreement among ex PM Kang, and Sterne Agee executives Deborah Kelley and Gregg Schonhorn to pay Kang bribes in the form of “entertainment, travel, lavish meals, prostitutes, nightclub bottle service, narcotics, luxury gifts, and cash payments” among other things, in exchange for fixed-income business.
us_v._kang_and_kelley_indictment.pdf by Chris Bragg
The value of the alleged bribe was more than $1 million, Bharara’s office said, including such gifts as trips to New Orleans and Montreal, a ski trip to Park City, Utah, a $17,400 luxury wrist watch, tickets to Broadway shows and the U.S. Open, cocaine and crack cocaine, as well as thousands of dollars for strippers and prostitutes.
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Kang steered more than $2 billion in fixed-income business to the brokers, the indictment says, which resulted in millions in commissions.
(Reuters)-Dec 21 U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday accused a former portfolio manager at New York state’s retirement fund of steering $2 billion in trades in exchange for bribes from brokerage employees, in the latest pay-to-play case to rock the fund.
Navnoor Kang, the ex-director of fixed income at the New York State Common Retirement Fund, was charged in an indictment filed in Manhattan federal court along with Deborah Kelley, a former Sterne Agee Group Inc managing director. Gregg Schonhorn, another broker-dealer whom prosecutors said paid bribes, was charged in related court filings (Reporting by Nate Raymond and David Ingram)
More Securities law news courtesy of Law360.com ….
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