Brazil ex-billionaire fined US$134 million for insider trading

[SAO PAULO] Eike Batista, once the richest man in Brazil, has been fined around US$134 million for insider trading, the securities commission said Monday, as the ex-billionaire remains under house arrest pending an appeal against a 30-year jail sentence.

Apart from the fine, the 62-year-old also was banned for seven years from running a publicly traded company.

Batista was accused of selling shares in his oil company OGX in 2013 when he knew it would be unable to explore blocks acquired at an auction in 2007.

It was the second time he has been fined for insider trading.

An emblem of Brazil's boom years, Batista amassed a fortune with investments in mining and oil that in 2012 put him in seventh place on Forbes's list of the world's wealthiest.

But by 2013 a downturn in the commodities market wiped out a fortune that had been estimated at US$30 billion.

He later came under scrutiny by investigators in the vast "Car Wash" operation that revealed mass corruption by public officials linked to Petrobras.

In July 2018, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for corruption and money laundering.

He was found guilty by a Rio de Janeiro court of paying a US$16.5 million bribe to the ex-governor of Rio, Sergio Cabral, allegedly through the fictitious sale of a gold mine.

Cabral is currently serving a prison sentence of more than 100 years following five convictions for graft.

AFP