FCA secures £1.6m confiscation order against Operation Tabernula fugitive

The confiscation order was made in Baldwin’s absence after he absconded from justice during his trial and conviction for money laundering in 2017. He was previously sentenced to a total of five years and eight months’ imprisonment for the offence as well as separate contempts of court which he admitted in 2015.

Operation Tabernula, one of the FCA’s largest and most complex insider dealing investigations, found that Baldwin helped launder the proceeds of insider dealing through offshore companies and bank accounts.

Baldwin was a business partner of Andrew Hind who, along with Martyn Dodgson, was convicted of conspiracy to insider deal between November 2006 and March 2010. Dodgson sourced inside information from within the investment banks at which he worked and passed on this inside information to Hind who acted as a ‘middle man’.

To receive some of the proceeds from the conspiracy, Baldwin set up a company in Panama and opened a company bank account in Zurich in which he deposited £1.5 million from insider dealing in Scottish & Newcastle plc.

Baldwin later fled to Geneva, withdrawing the sterling equivalent of £114,000 in cash and liquidated assets worth more than £82,500.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Baldwin, who remains at large, to be brought before the Court.

Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said: "Money-launderers compound the harm caused by crime by helping to cover up the offence and the proceeds from it. Mr Baldwin remains a fugitive. However, this will not prevent us from pursuing a confiscation order to recover the benefit a person has obtained from their criminality."