Nearly two years after Richard Baldwin’s July 13, 2017 conviction for money laundering the proceeds of an insider dealing conspiracy, reporting restrictions about the case were lifted, and the UK Financial Conduct Authority was able to publicize the conviction. In related prosecutions in 2016, Baldwin’s co-conspirators, Martyn Dodgson and Andrew Hind, were also convicted of conspiracy to insider deal.
According to the evidence, Baldwin and Hind were business partners who ran a luxury watch business; they received inside information from Dodgson, who worked at an investment bank, and conspired to deal secretly based on the inside information. Baldwin opened a Swiss bank account and established a company in Panama. In 2007 he received £1.5 from insider dealing, provided false invoices to his bankers in order to obscure the source of the money, and then distributed the sum through a network of Panamanian companies and offshore accounts.
Baldwin was also convicted of contempt of court, for violating a restraint order issued in June 2011, and liquidating the assets that were subject to the order. He is the sixth individual convicted in the case, dubbed Operation Tabernula by the FCA – one of the agency’s largest and most complex insider dealing investigations to-date.