The FBI arrested a Credit Suisse investment banker on Thursday and charged him with securities fraud for allegedly tipping an accomplice in Pakistan to nine transactions the bank was working on, including a leveraged buy-out of TXU and Babcock & Brown’s acquisition of Northwestern Energy. Hafiz Nazeem, 37, began work as a junior banker on Credit Suisse’s global energy team in March 2006 and soon began phoning tips to a banker in Pakistan. The accomplice allegedly placed dozens of trades ahead of merger announcements and netted more than $7m, according to the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan, which will prosecute the case. The SEC, which filed parallel civil charges against Mr Nazeem, caught wind of the scheme while it was investigating a rash of trades placed ahead of TXU’s February announcement that it had agreed to a leveraged buy-out by an investor group led by KKR and TPG.
