Former Regulatory Affairs Director Charged With Insider Trading

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday charged Robert Gadimian, former senior director of regulatory affairs for Puma Biotechnology, with making more than $1.1 million thanks to non-public information linked to the company’s breast cancer treatment.

The SEC alleges that Gadimian pocketed the illicit profits by secretly purchasing Puma stock and short-term call options based on non-public information he learned about positive developments in two clinical trials for Puma’s breast cancer drug, neratinib, which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently reviewing. 

Gadimian allegedly bought Puma securities before the results from the first trial were announced in December 2013 and again before the results of the second trial were announced in July 2014.

According to the SEC’s complaint, Puma confronted Gadimian after learning about his trades and he admitted to trading because of “greed.”  Gadimian allegedly proceeded to alter his trading records before providing them to Puma for its internal investigation, deleting certain trades in Puma securities and renumbering the pages of the altered documents to hide his changes.  Gadimian was fired in October 2014.

In a parallel case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts on Thursday announced criminal charges against Gadimian.