US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross has denied insider trading when he offloaded stock in Navigator Holdings shortly before its links to associates of Vladimir Putin were revealed last year.
Bloomberg reported that Ross sold the shares on 31 October, a day after a New York Times reporter sought comment from him about the LPG carrier company's dealings with a Russian energy firm.
The sales were worth between $100,000 and $250,000, according to forms filed by Ross with the Office of Government Ethics.
The stock fell 3.9% by 16 November.
The links to Russia were revealed in the Paradise Papers — documents leaked from the Bermuda law firm Appleby.
They showed Navigator carried out business with Russian energy firm Sibur, whose owners include Putin’s son-in-law Kirill Shamalov and Gennady Timchenko, a Russian oligarch. Both are subject to US sanctions.
“The reporter contacted me to write about my personal financial holdings and not about Navigator Holdings or its prospects,” Ross said in a statement this week.
He added that he did not receive any non-public information due to his government position or from government employees.
"Not market-moving"
“The fact that the reporter planned to do a story on me certainly is not market-moving information,” Ross said.
He said the transaction had been reviewed and approved by government ethics officials.
Ross sold Navigator holdings worth $2m and $10m in May 2017, which he “believed at the time was the extent of my interest in Navigator".
He added he later learned that he had some other small holdings due to his service on the company’s board from 2012 to 2014.
He said he carried out the sale of these as quickly as possible, and to comply with New York Stock Exchange rules that require shares to be transferred within two days of the sale.
“I had to borrow shares in Navigator equal to the number of shares I sold to complete the transaction under the NYSE rules,” Ross said in the statement. “I then replaced the borrowed shares with the shares held in my name when I received them a few weeks later.
“I received the value of the shares as of the short sale date."
