Insiders may not buy stock based on possession of material nonpublic information.
Since 1934, the Securities and Exchange Commission has prohibited trading while in possession of material nonpublic information.
"Some of my best recommendations were based on what the S.E.C. now calls the 'knowing possession' of material nonpublic information," Ms. Siebert acknowledges.
Witness the Terrorism Act 2000, which criminalises the possession of material which might be useful to a terrorist, or the law against "glorifying" terrorism.
The suit charges some of the defendants with insider trading, in that they sold while in possession of "material non-public information" that was likely to depress the shares.
In a civil lawsuit filed in New Jersey, the S.E.C. accused him of selling 20,900 shares of Boron LePore in February 1999 before and after two significant events while in possession of material nonpublic information.
Rule 14e-3 makes it a violation for any person to trade "who is in possession of material information relating to such tender offer" that the person knows or has reason to know came from any party to the transaction.
Harrigan was one of the people who, having been tipped off between the time the feature was completed and the time the magazine came out, hurried over to Snow's like inside traders in possession of material information not available to the general public.
"We don't really know what the evidence is," Wisniewski said on NBC's Meet the Press, pointing out that if Wildstein had personal possession of material implicating Christie, he would have been expected to include it in his previous submission under subpoena.
A Catholic media spokesman, Peter Kearney, said the church would co-operate fully with the police, but added: "If someone has been in possession of material which they felt showed criminal behaviour, they would be expected to explain why they had taken 18 years to hand it to the authorities".
"There is no case in which such a long and persistent course of manufacture of both guns and explosives combined with possession of material likely to be useful to those who commit terrorist acts has ever been before a court before".
