The U.K.'s Financial Services Authority lost an insider-case because it had no record of a phone call that was the key evidence against former broker Tim Baldwin. The Independent reports that London’s Financial Services & Market Tribunal handed the FSA its first defeat in 26 hearings when it could not produce any proof of the alleged phone call that allegedly provided Baldwin, then of Canaccord Capital, with the tip that supposedly led him to profit by selling out his position in Irish mining company Minment only days before a positive trading statement pumped up its stock by more than 300%.
The FSA, which had unsuccessfully argued that the call was made from an untraceable telephone, made no mention of the decision on its Web site, but an agency spokesman told the paper that the decision “shows how difficult it is in certain market abuse cases to prove the link between individuals and how information may have been shared and acted upon.”