Glen Point Capital co-founder Neil Phillips asked a federal judge to toss out charges that he tried to manipulate the $7.5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.
(Bloomberg) — Glen Point Capital co-founder Neil Phillips asked a federal judge to toss out charges that he tried to manipulate the $7.5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.
Sean Hecker, a lawyer for Phillips, filed a request for dismissal Friday with US District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan. Phillips faces an October trial on the charges after being arrested while on vacation in Spain last year. He has pleaded not guilty and has been released on bond.
Glen Point Co-Founder’s Arrest Could Ripple Across Funds
Phillips, a veteran of finance backed by billionaire George Soros, is accused of attempting to drive down the exchange rate between the US dollar and the South African rand on the day after Christmas in 2017 to trigger a $20 million wager on the pairing. The trades allegedly generated $16 million for Glen Point and $4 million for Soros Fund Management.
In the filing late Friday, Hecker argues there was nothing illegal about the trades.
The transactions were “made on the open market — real trades with real counterparties and real risk,” Hecker wrote.
Phillips also didn’t have any obligation to disclose his trading activity. Prosecutors, relying on “boilerplate language” in an agreement between Phillips’s hedge fund and its broker, wrongly suggest it created such an obligation, according to the filing.
The agreement “imposed no duty on Phillips to disclose his trades to anyone — let alone the counterparty to the option, a market participant whose identity Phillips did not even know,” Hecker argued. “The indictment invents a duty that did not exist based on the very written agreement that disclaimed it.”
Glen Point was closed after an aborted merger with rival hedge fund Eisler Capital.
The case is US v. Phillips, 22-cr-138, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
(Updates with details of the filing in the fourth paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.