I was no insider dealer, Soros says

[emad]

February 11, 2005

Times
From Adam Sage in Paris



GEORGE SOROS, the billionaire investor, yesterday told a Paris appeal court that he was innocent of the charges that led to his conviction for insider trading in France.

Mr Soros, 74, was appealing against a €2.2 million (£1.5 million) fine imposed upon him by the Paris Criminal Court two years ago. The fine was equivalent to the profits he made from allegedly using privileged information during a botched raid on the Société Générale bank in 1988.

“I didn’t consider it to be in any way privileged information,” he said yesterday after flying from America for the hearing, which took place in a small, dark appeal court chamber at the Palais de Justice.

“I think that I have a fairly good understanding of what constitutes insider information. If I had had any inkling that I was in receipt of insider information, I wouldn’t have included Société Générale in the bouquet of shares I bought subsequently.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1479316,00.html

UK PRESS slammed Soros for the "Black Wednesday" biz in '92 when the Major Government lost a reported £3.3billion over the Exchange Rate mechanism, saying that it would have been cheaper to have simply "stuffed the billions into a suitcase and given it to Soros like he asked"..........