Former US hedge fund manager is rearrested
A fugitive US hedge fund manager, wanted in the United States in relation to a multimillion-dollar fraud case, was arrested for the second time in a month in Greece, police officials said yesterday. Angelo Haligiannis, formerly president of New York-based Sterling Watters Capital Advisors LLC, was initially detained on the island of Crete last month but was released pending a US extradition request. Haligiannis pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in a US federal court in September 2005, admitting he had defrauded investors by issuing «materially false and misleading statements» over the investment performance of his fund, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He had been indicted in 2004 for «dramatically overstating» the assets under management and fund performance over four years to 2003, and bilking investors out of «tens of millions of dollars,» according to US court papers. «Police have arrested Haligiannis again at a toll station on an Athens motorway on a Greek prosecutor’s arrest warrant, based on charges of defrauding Greeks abroad,» the police official, who spoke on condition of anonimity, told Reuters. It was not yet clear whether these were new charges. US authorities had been pressing Greece to arrest him again after his conditional release in August. Haligiannis, who was not available for comment, was due to appear before an Athens prosecutor later in the day, the police official said. Haligiannis told investors in the United States, many of whom were Greek Americans, his funds managed $180 million in 2003 and that the fund had achieve returns of 1,565 percent between 1996 and 2003, according to the indictment. Based on those claims, Haligiannis raised a total of $26 million from some 80 investors. But the fund suffered losses of more than $17 million in 2000 alone. By January 2003, the firm had assets of less than $170,000 and «did virtually no trading whatsoever,» the SEC said. Haligiannis, who was free on bail after the guilty plea, failed to appear at a sentencing hearing in New York in January 2006 and was the target of an international manhunt. (Reuters)
