New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Philip Falcone has sold 18.6 million shares of Harbinger Group to “mini Berkshire Hathaway” Leucadia National Corp, Bloomberg reports.

Falcone sold the shares worth $158m as part of a move to raise funds for his SEC settlement of more than $18 million. The SEC filings also show that the Harbringer hedge funds also sold 5.1 million shares to undisclosed investors.

The SEC filed enforcement actions in June 2012 alleging that Falcone improperly used $113 million in fund assets to pay his personal taxes, secretly favored certain customer redemption requests at the expense of other investors, and conducted an improper “short squeeze” in bonds issued by a Canadian company.

“Falcone and Harbinger engaged in serious misconduct that harmed investors, and their admissions leave no doubt that they violated the federal securities laws,” said Andrew Ceresney, Co-Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Falcone must now pay a heavy price for his misconduct by surrendering millions of dollars and being barred from the hedge fund industry.”

Describing the illegal short squeeze, Gerald W. Hodgkins, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement said, “After he took control of an entire issue of high-yield bonds, Falcone kept buying with an eye toward rigging the market and punishing short sellers to settle a score. In the process, Falcone hijacked the market for the bonds and illegally manipulated their price and availability.”

Philip Falcone is the 1175th richest person in the world, and the 377th richest in the United States with a net worth of $1.2 billion. (Wikipedia)

Alex Akesson
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