Area SEC Staffer Was Bad
New York-based employee Steven Gilchrist was charged with three counts of making false statements regarding the nature of his personal financial holdings, according a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York. Mr. Gilchrist was arrested Tuesday, the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office said. The arrest is tied to a recent probe of the personal financial holdings of some SEC employees in New York by U.S. prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission's internal watchdog, which The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Mr. Gilchrist, a compliance examiner at the agency, allegedly told the SEC three times that he had no stockholdings prohibited by the agency's ethical rules, when in reality he had shares of six companies that agency staffers are barred from holding, the complaint said. The SEC has strict rules on the stocks employees can hold. The agency goes further in its employee-trading restrictions than many other federal agencies, which generally prohibit employees from working on any matter in which they have financial interests. [WSJ]