Michael Steinberg’s trial will start tomorrow and comes two weeks after Steven Cohen’s hedge fund agreed to pay a total fine of $1.8 billion to settle the long-running insider trading inquiry.

Steinberg is reportedly on leave from SAC and faces criminal charges after he was arrested on Good Friday this year, the report said. Since the first charges were announced in October 2009, 76 people have been convicted, it added.

It was reported that Steinberg’s lawyer declined to comment on the case but that in the past has said his client did “absolutely nothing wrong” and his “trading decisions were based on detailed analysis.”

Reuters also highlighted that, while several SAC employees have been charged, most have pleaded guilty. Steinberg is the first to fight his case before a jury, the news service said.

The SAC case

The settlement, reached at the start of this month, brought to an end a seven-year-long investigation by US prosecutors and fuels months of speculation as regards whether Cohen might turn the remainder of his business into a family office-type structure . 

Court filings outline that portfolio managers and research analysts from across the SAC entity “engaged in a pattern of obtaining inside information from dozens of publicly-traded companies across multiple industry sectors.”

The documents add that the “relentless pursuit of an information ‘edge’ fostered a business culture within SAC in which there was no meaningful commitment to ensure that such ‘edge’ came from legitimate research and not inside information.”

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