© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The logo of insurer Allianz SE is seen on the company building in Puteaux at the financial and business district of La Defense near Paris, outside Paris, France, May 14, 2018. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. judge has rejected former Allianz (ETR:) fund manager Gregoire Tournant’s bid to dismiss a criminal fraud case over his role in causing more than $7 billion of investor losses.
In an order made public on Friday, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan federal court denied Tournant’s motion to dismiss the five-count indictment, which also includes an obstruction charge. Tournant has pleaded not guilty.
Swain plans to file a redacted opinion containing her reasoning as soon as mid-August.
Her decision followed the July 12 approval by another Manhattan federal judge of Allianz’s $6 billion settlement with U.S. authorities, in which a unit of the German insurer pleaded guilty to a securities fraud criminal charge.
Tournant had been the creator and chief investment officer of Allianz’s now-defunct Structured Alpha Funds.
Once with more than $11 billion of assets under management, the funds lost about $7 billion in February and March 2020 as the start of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted markets.
Prosecutors accused Tournant of covering up the funds’ risks and trying to mislead Allianz’s in-house lawyers and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, while pocketing about $60 million in pay.
Lawyers for Tournant did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Swain’s order.
In seeking a dismissal, Tournant said the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which had represented him and Allianz, “switched sides” and made him a scapegoat to “save” the German insurer after it decided to cooperate with prosecutors.
Tournant said dismissing the indictment was justified because prosecutors’ “intrusion” into his attorney-client relationship had been “manifestly and avowedly corrupt.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan countered that Tournant’s claims were baseless, and that he was seeking to evade responsibility “by laying blame at the feet of everyone but himself.”
Two other former portfolio managers have pleaded guilty in the case and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Tournant’s trial is scheduled for Feb. 5, 2024.
The case is U.S. v. Tournant, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-cr-00276.
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