Details Emerge from David Baazov's Alleged Insider Trading

David Baazov, the former CEO and still major shareholder of Amaya Inc, the owners of PokerStars, has always maintained his innocence with regards the charges of insider trading levied against him by the Canadian government in March. Details have now emerged of the transactions allegedly made by Baazov and others dating back several years, and they certainly make for interesting reading.

In documents presented this week to the courts from AMF, the Quebec financial regulator, it is alleged that Baazov, along with his brother Josh and an associate Craig Levett received cash, gifts, and cheques in exchange for information in attempts to influence the price of Amaya's securities - with the "gift" amounts usually equating to around 10% of the net profits.

AMF are claiming that these arrangements were "negotiated" prior to the offenses, and were often conducted in "coded language".

As reported at cardschat.com, in a 2013 email obtained by the AMF with the subject title “WMS,” Levett wrote to Josh Baazov: “Hi Josh. Here is what we owe your brother. I will have a check for him and you to.”

In the same year, WMS was acquired by Scientific Games for $1.42 billion. Levett later wrote two checks for $32,100 made out to Josh, which were allegedly labeled “gift.”

Regarding what is being labelled the biggest insider trading scandal in Canadian history the AMF have said, "These were the activities of an organized group that traded regularly on information of numerous mergers and acquisitions still unknown to the public,”

Amaya's offices were first raided back in December 2014 but no charges were formally filed until March this year after which Baazov took a leave of absence from his CEO role. He formally resigned his post just last month but still remains the largest sharholder. He is vehemently denying all charges.