Thursday, June 4, 2009

Countrywide's Mozilo accused of fraud

Aundrea Entrekin

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday said it had filed securities fraud charges against former Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo and two other former executives. The trio are being charged with deliberately misleading investors about the significant credit risk Countrywide took to build and maintain its market share. Mozilo was also charged with insider trading for selling his Countrywide stock for nearly $140 million in profits while knowing that Countrywide's business model was deteriorating. The SEC alleges that Mozilo, along with former COO and President David Sambol and former CFO Eric Sieracki, misled the market by falsely assuring investors that Countrywide was primarily a prime-quality mortgage lender.

My question about this is if a CEO can not sell their stocks based on the companies progress because it would be considered insider trading, why are there not rules saying when CEO's or other workers can sell their stocks or have someone over seeing the sale of these stocks.

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