Trio charged over insider trading

The plot is said to involve early copies of Business Week

A Goldman Sachs analyst, a Merrill Lynch banker and a printer have been arrested charged with insider trading.

According to court documents the three, along with another worker at Goldman Sachs, took part in an insider trading plot that made more than $6.7m (£3.8m).

The Goldman workers are alleged to have bribed staff at a printing plant to get early copies of Business Week magazine.

The pair are also believed to have paid the Merrill analyst for inside information on takeovers.

Early copies

According to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan, two employees at the Business Week printing plant - including Juan Renteria who has also been charged - were bribed to smuggle out advanced copies of the magazine.

The men were paid by Goldman workers Eugene Plotkin and David Pajcin, who used information from pre-publication versions of the magazine's Inside Wall Street column for dealing, reports suggested.

In another scheme, Mr Plotkin and another Goldman employee paid Merrill analyst Stanislav Shpigelman for inside information on forthcoming mergers and acquisitions, the court documents added.

The papers allege that Mr Shpigelman provided such information for cash and promises of further payments based on a percentage of profits from any deals.

Prosecutors also claim that the scheme took on an international element when the Goldman pair began selling on Mr Shpigelman's tips to people overseas - including at least two people in Europe - and tried to open Swiss bank accounts.

Mr Plotkin, Mr Shpigelman and Mr Renteria have all been arrested an charged with conspiracy to commit insider trading.

The case is linked to last year's arrest of Mr Pacjin. The former Goldman employee is cooperating with authorities, officials said.

New charges

In November, he was arrested by the FBI, accused of trading on information contained in stolen advance copies of Business Week magazine - charges he denied.

Earlier in 2005, he was caught up in a separate insider trading case regarding shares of sports firm Reebok.

In August, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) named Mr Pajcin as a defendant in a case centred around "highly suspicious" share trades in the lead up to Reebok's sale to rival Adidas-Salomon.

At the time his lawyer said his client was not guilty and said that the amount of money in question was small.