Ex-Pfizer employee charged with illegal trading based on unreleased Covid pill trial data
[ad_1]
Federal authorities charged a former Pfizer employee and his close friend Thursday with illegally trading shares based on non-public trial results on the pharmaceutical company's Covid antiviral pill Paxlovid . The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission both announced respective insider trading charges against Amit Dagar , a former senior statistical programming lead at Pfizer, and his friend Atul Bhiwapurkar. Dagar, who helped manage and analyze Paxlovid clinical trial data, and Bhiwapurkar "participated in an insider trading scheme to reap illicit profits from options trading based on inside information" about the then-unreleased Paxlovid results in November 2021, according to the DOJ. The two individuals sold their Pfizer call options at "significant profits" totaling more than $350,000, the DOJ said in a release . "The charges in this case relate to the personal conduct of a former Pfizer employee in violation of