A Swiss lawyer who was convicted in the US for his role in an international ‘pump and dump’ scheme has been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Matthew Ledvina, then 46, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a federal court in Boston in January 2019 and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years of supervised probation and fined $50,000 (£42,000), the US Department of Justice said in June 2020.
The DOJ said Ledvina ‘assisted his co-conspirators by creating nominee entities’ that were used to hold shares in a publicly-traded company as part of a scheme to ‘artificially inflate the price and trading volume of those shares’.
Ledvina, who was admitted to the roll in England and Wales in 2007 but does not have a current practising certificate, previously worked for international firm Baker McKenzie before co-founding private client specialists Anaford, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was working for Anaford in Zurich, Switzerland at the time of the conspiracy, the Solicitors Regulation Authority said.
The SDT has ‘certified that there is a case to answer in respect of allegations which are or include that, having been admitted as a solicitor of the senior courts, on dates between approximately 2013 and 2018, [Ledvina] conspired with others to commit securities fraud’, according to an SRA decision.
‘The allegations are subject to a hearing before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and are as yet unproven,’ the regulator added. Ledvina did not immediately respond to a request for comment when contacted by the Gazette.
