The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained asset freezes and other emergency relief measures against three Swiss investment firms over insider trading.

The civil lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New York, involves three Swiss-based investment firms: Compania Internacional Financiera, Coudree Capital Gestion, and Chartwell Asset Management Services.

Both Compania International Financiera and Coudree Capital Gestion are owned by Yomi Rodrig, a Turkish national living in Geneva who was involved in an earlier civil settlement with the SEC. While all three are Swiss based, Compania International Financiera is an offshore vehicle organized under the IBC Act of the BVI.

The SEC’s latest complaint involves “highly profitable and suspicious” purchases of securities in Arch Chemicals, a Connecticut-based firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange, which were made leading up to Arch’s acquisition by Swiss-based Lonza Group, as announced on 11 July.

The defendants amassed Arch stock in the week prior to the announcement, and went on to sell them afterwards, “realizing millions of dollars in trading profits,” the SEC said. The trades were placed through accounts in London.

As the three companies are non-US based, the SEC alleged there was a “substantial risk” the proceeds would be transferred beyond the jurisdiction of the country’s courts, and thus applied for emergency relief and an order preventing any overseas transfer of the profits.

This isn’t the first time Rodrig has fallen foul of the SEC. In 2005, without admitting or denying wrongdoing, he and his company paid around $6.2 million to settle a civil action. That action was over the violation of rules which prohibit covering a short sale with securities obtained in a public offering when the short sale occurs within a restricted period before the pricing of the offering.

Family Wealth Report could not contact Compania Internacional Financiera or Coudree Capital Gestion, and Chartwell Asset Management Services declined to comment.