S.E.C. to Appeal Dismissal of Case Against Mark Cuban

According to excerpts from this article:

But the S.E.C. failed to prove that Mr. Cuban had made an agreement with the chief executive during the call that he would not sell his own shares, Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater of the Federal District Court in Dallas wrote in a 35-page decision released Friday.

The judge wrote that while the S.E.C. showed that Mr. Cuban “entered into a confidentiality agreement, it does not allege that he agreed, expressly or implicitly, to refrain from trading on or otherwise using for his own benefit the information the C.E.O. was about to share.”

Need I say more?

From me beforehand:

Personally, I hope the new administration makes some big changes at the SEC, and they start to go after the real criminals.

From CNNMoney.com now:

Bush appointee Christopher Cox, the SEC’s chairman, has been widely criticized for failing to act on information that could have prevented Madoff’s scheme. Cox said last week at a Congressional hearing that “credible information” had been brought to the SEC’s attention over a period of nearly 10 years about Madoff’s activities, but no formal investigation was made.

To go off on a tangent, this criticism should also extend to former Bush administration SEC chairman appointees Harvey Pitt and William Donaldson, and even to current United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey, all who failed to do anything about the Madoff scheme.

Here’s a copy of the Markopolos complaint sent to the SEC, written by a credible, independent and neutral third party, and then summarily ignored by SEC investigators.

Yet, the SEC found it important to protect we Americans investors by quickly investigating Mark Cuban after a complaint from the same person who may have initiated the “alleged” insider trading scheme.

Still think there’s no political involvement in the Cuban case?

Another View: Can the S.E.C. Find Its Mojo?