为何内幕交易者在美国能屡次脱罪？

2014年12月，美国第二巡回上诉法院裁定，原对冲基金交易员托德·纽曼的有罪判决无效。此次裁定震动了美国的法律界，同时它也再次说明了美国法律对内幕交易的界定有多么不直观。

对于此次裁决，曼哈顿最高检察官普里特·巴拉拉已经递交了法律文书表示抗议，称第二巡回上诉法院的此次裁决将“极大限制政府对一些最常见、最应受谴责以及对市场危害最大的内幕交易的检举能力。”——但他的抗议目前仍然是徒劳的。

由于去年美国最高法院已经驳回了政府的申诉申请，因此目前纽曼脱罪已成定局，但围绕此案引发的争议却仍在发酵。

今年10月，美国最高法院将审理加利福尼亚州的一起案件，此案又被称为“巴萨姆·萨尔曼vs美国”案，该案涉及的情节也和纽曼案差不多。另外，目前还有几个法案也被引入国会进行讨论，它们或将有望推翻第二巡回法院的判例。（很多与内幕交易有关的法案已历经多年仍无定论，但如果萨尔曼案的裁决也引用了纽曼案的判例，那么或许某个与内幕交易有关的法案这次可能会获得国会通过。）

从某些方面来看，纽曼案所引起的争议并不是什么新鲜事。几十年来，美国法学界一直在就内幕交易立法的适当政策目标进行争论。纽曼案只不过是让这场争论再起波澜而已。

这场争论归根结底，是由于美国对于内幕交易尚无一个明确的法律定义。司法部门在审理内幕交易案件时只能援引一个关于禁止证券诈骗的法律，而法官则认为，并非所有泄露重要的非公开信息的行为都能被上升到“诈骗”的层面。

从历史角度看，美国的自由派（以及美国证券交易委员会）历来倾向于为所有投资者创造一个公平竞争的环境，也就是没人能享有信息优势。而保守派人士则认为，如果分析师们由于努力攫取信息优势而获得了回报，那么这实际上将有益于市场的发展，美国最高法院实际上也持此立场。因此，只有当交易者依靠窃取的信息或是具有保守义务者故意泄露的信息进行交易时，才会构成内幕交易。

如果以这个标准来衡量，纽曼的交易行为就处于一个灰色地带上。他实际上是一个信息的“远程受领者”。要想明白这个术语的含义，我们首先需要后退一步，举个例子进行说明。

如果一名交易员送给一名企业高管一包现金，以换取对方向其泄露重要的非公开信息，那么这两位高管（泄密者）和交易员（受领者）都犯有内幕交易罪。泄密者违反了他对公司股东的保守义务，而受领者的罪名则是在泄密者的罪名的基础上衍生的。

再举一个更有难度的例子：泄密者没有接受任何明显的贿赂。在1983年美国最高法院审理的美国证监会vs德克斯一案中，最高法院认为，如果泄密者个人没有通过泄密获得任何利益，那么他就没有犯下诈骗罪，因此也就不能以内幕交易罪对其进行处罚。事实上德克斯案也是一桩非常另类的案子：一家保险公司高管将内幕信息泄露给了分析师雷蒙德·德克斯，但却没有接受任何好处。因为这位高管所透露的信息就是保险公司内部存在欺诈行为，他之所以要把信息透出去，目的就是为了揭发不法行为。

就连审理德克斯一案的法庭也认为，掌握内幕信息者如果将信息“赠予”了“一名从事交易相关工作者或一个朋友”，那么他仍然有可能构成内幕交易罪，因为在这些情形下，泄密者本人很可能会获得一些无形的利益。

在纽曼一案中，企业的内幕消息人士将内幕消息透露给了一个互相利用的对冲基金分析师的小圈子，这些分析师相互透露了该内幕消息，并且将内幕消息透露给了包括纽曼在内的产品经理。该内幕消息的最初泄露者并没有因为透露消息而获得任何经济利益，不过检方还是认为，如果援引德克斯案的判例，那么他们依然是有罪的，因为他们通过把消息有意赠予“交易员朋友”而获得了无形的利益。

第二巡回法院基于两个理由驳回了检方的上述观点：第一，它对德克斯一案的“赠予”二字的语义解释是非常狭义的——政府甚至宣称“赠予”内幕信息这种说法是“不存在”的。

其次，上诉法院发现，即使泄密者获得了某种个人利益，检方也并未证明纽曼——也就是这位“远程受领者”，知道自己获得了这种利益。

法院提出的第二个理由尤其引起了批评人士的强烈反弹。他们抗议称，这个理由等于是给那些有权有势的大人物提供了一把保护伞。以巴拉拉为首的检察们在向提交给法院的复议申请书中写道，这个标准“实质上给那些精明的对冲基金经理提供了一张猫腻路线图，他们可以将自己置身内幕信息链的一端，并且有意不去了解具体是谁透露了保密信息和不当披露的信息，从而使自己免除领受者的义务。”

对于第二巡回法院的裁决，纽曼的律师只是简单地引用了“一条历史悠久的法律原则，即只有当被告人认识到了违法事实，他才可能被判处有罪。”

纽曼虽然胜诉了，但现在美国司法部却希望萨尔曼案能有一个不同的结果。司法部表示，纽曼案的判例根本就是“谬误的”。由于已故大法官斯卡利亚在最高法院的位子尚未被新人接任，因此今年10月的巴萨姆案在裁决时很可能会出现四比四的僵局。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in December 2014, that overturned the conviction of hedge fund trader Todd Newman has roiled the legal landscape and demonstrated just how nonintuitive the definition of insider trading is.

In response, the office of Manhattan’s top prosecutor, Preet Bharara, has protested through legal filings—so far in vain—that the decision would “dramatically limit the government’s ability to prosecute some of the most common, culpable, and market-threatening forms of insider trading.”

Though Newman’s exoneration is final—last year the Supreme Court rebuffed the government’s request to hear its appeal—the controversies raised by his case rage on.

In October the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case from California, known as Bassam Salman v. United States, which presents similar issues. Meanwhile, several bills have been introduced in Congress to overturn the Second Circuit’s precedent. (Many bills concerning insider trading have been floated over the years, but if the Salman ruling endorses the decision in Newman’s case, one may actually pass this time.)

The disputes spawned by Newman’s case are, in some respects, not new. They are, rather, the latest permutation of a debate that has been playing out for decades over the proper policy goals of our insider-trading laws.

The arguments stem from the fact that there is no actual statute defining the offense. Instead, the law that is used to prosecute it is a general one prohibiting securities fraud, and judges have decided that not all leaks of material nonpublic information rise to the level of “fraud.”

Historically, liberals (and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) have favored creating a level playing field for all investors, where no one has an informational advantage. Conservatives, on the other hand, have urged—and the Supreme Court has held—that markets actually benefit when analysts are rewarded for digging for informational advantages. As a consequence, only trading on information obtained via theft or by breach of a fiduciary duty can amount to insider trading.

Against this benchmark, Newman’s trading fell into a gray area. He was what’s known as a “remote tippee.” To understand that term, we need to take a step back.

If a trader gives a corporate officer a briefcase full of cash in exchange for material nonpublic information, both the officer (the “tipper”) and the trader (“the tippee”) are guilty of insider trading. The tipper has violated his fiduciary duty to the corporation’s shareholders, while the guilt of the tippee derives from the tipper’s.

A tougher case arises when the tipper doesn’t receive any obvious payment. In the landmark 1983 Supreme Court case SEC v. Dirks, the Supreme Court held that if the tipper receives no personal benefit in exchange for a tip, he hasn’t committed fraud and thus can’t be guilty of insider trading. In that case—a weird one factually—a former officer of an insurance company tipped off analyst Raymond Dirks, without recompense, to the fact that fraud was taking place within the company, apparently in an effort to blow the whistle.

Yet even the Dirks court acknowledged that some “gifts” of information—for example, those to a “trading relative or friend”—could still amount to illegal insider trading because of the intangible benefits that accrue to the tipper in those situations.

In Newman’s case, corporate insiders passed tips to a circle of back-scratching hedge fund analysts, who then passed the tips to each other and then up the line to their portfolio managers—including Newman. The original tippers had received no payments in exchange for passing the information, but prosecutors argued that they were still culpable under Dirks, because they had received intangible benefits from having given gifts of information to “trading friends.”

The Second Circuit rejected the argument for two reasons. First, it gave a very narrow interpretation to Dirks’s language about gifts—one that the government has since claimed interprets the language “out of existence.”

Second, the appeals court found that even if the tipper had received some personal benefit, the prosecution hadn’t proved that Newman—the remote ¬tippee—knew he had.

This second hurdle has particularly incensed the ruling’s critics, who protest that it all but immunizes big shots. This standard “provides a virtual road map for savvy hedge-fund managers,” Bharara’s prosecutors wrote in their unsuccessful petition for reconsideration, “to insulate themselves from tippee liability by knowingly placing themselves at the end of a chain of insider information and avoiding learning details about the sources of obvious confidential and improperly disclosed information.”

Newman’s attorneys responded that the Second Circuit had simply applied the “time-¬honored principle that a defendant may be criminally convicted only if he knows the facts that render his conduct unlawful.”

Newman’s argument carried the day then. But now the Justice Department is hoping for a do-over courtesy of the Supreme Court in the Salman case, in which it’s arguing that the Newman precedent was simply “erroneous.” Given that the late Justice Scalia hasn’t yet been replaced on the court, however, there’s a good chance of a 4–4 stalemate ruling.