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A former Goldman Sachs analyst has been found guilty of insider trading and fraud by a London jury in a high-profile case brought by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
Mohammed Zina was convicted at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday after he used information obtained at the investment bank to trade in stocks including semiconductor designer Arm and pub company Punch Taverns.
The 35-year-old, who turned a profit of about £140,000 from the insider trading, financed with loans obtained fraudulently from Tesco Bank, held his head in his hands after the jury found him guilty unanimously on all nine counts. He is due to be sentenced on Friday.
Lawyers for Zina, who worked in Goldman’s conflict resolution group, had argued during the trial he did not know he had inside information and also questioned the reliability of the prosecution’s witnesses.
The jury heard how he had grown up in a challenging environment and was raised by a single mother in London.
It was told that, even after he started working for Goldman, Zina worked at J Sainsbury at the weekends for a while. He “missed working with ordinary people”, a school friend said in a witness statement read out to the court.
Steve Smart, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said Zina “tried to cheat the market for his own personal gain by cynically trading on inside information”.
He added that the conviction “sends a clear message that economic crime is on our radar and we will take action to uphold the integrity of UK markets.”
The trial, which began in November, originally included Zina’s brother Suhail Zina, 36, a former Clifford Chance lawyer.
The brothers were both charged with six counts of insider dealing between July 2016 and December 2017 and three counts of fraud related to the Tesco Bank loans.
The judge directed the jury to acquit Suhail Zina on all counts just days before the end of the trial, after the FCA withdrew the fraud charges and the judge ruled there was no case to answer on the insider trading counts.
When he was arrested in December 2017, Mohammed Zina told FCA investigators in an interview, for which he declined legal representation, that he had “always worried” about the fact he hadn’t sought permission from Goldman to trade.
Judge Tony Baumgartner said the case had put a “heavy burden” on the jury, which deliberated for five days, and offered them exemptions from service for 10 years.
Neil Swift, partner at law firm Peters & Peters, said the FCA would be “delighted” to have secured a conviction “after a period of relative inactivity in terms of criminal enforcement”.
In a statement, Goldman Sachs said: “Mohammed Zina betrayed the trust we placed in him and his misuse of client information was in direct contradiction of our values.”
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