FACEBOOK founder Mark Zuckerberg has been accused in a civil lawsuit of billions of dollars worth of insider trading.
A crime like this can see someone fined a large sum or even put in jail for a very long time.
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Insider trading happens when a company trades stock based on inside information that they’re not supposed to know.
Zuckerberg is the CEO of Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, and it’s one of Meta’s investors that is accusing the CEO of insider trading crimes.
According to Law360, investor Hugues Gervat has filed ‘derivative litigation‘ accusing Zuckerberg of “pulling in more than $2.5 billion with insider sales just before, and while, a set of scandals rocked the social media giant last fall.”
A derivative lawsuit is a legal case that’s brought to court by a shareholder.
In this case, the complaint was recently filed in California federal court.
The angry investor is hoping to hold big bosses at Meta, including Zuckerberg, to account for their supposed crimes.
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They claim the company’s directors and executives are legally responsible for recent drops in Facebook’s stock value.
The lawsuit regards a time period before Facebook rebranded to Meta.
It focuses on a time last year when Facebook was being blasted with whistleblower accusations and claims apps like Facebook and Instagram were detrimental to the health of children.
The filing says Zuckerberg “directly engaged in insider trading, in violation of federal law”.
He’s accused of selling $2.57billion (£1.9billion) worth of shares between late April and October 2022 based on inside information.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen made her damning allegations in September and October of that year.
The legal complaint states: “As Facebook’s highest officer and as a trusted company director, [Zuckerberg] conducted little, if any, oversight of Facebook’s engagement in the schemes to engage in the platform content misconduct and to make false and misleading statements, consciously disregarded his duties to monitor such controls over reporting and engagement in the schemes, and consciously disregarded his duties to protect corporate assets.”
Adding: “His motive in facilitating and participating in the fraud is demonstrated by his insider sales prior to the exposure of the fraud.”
We have reached out to Meta Platforms for comment.
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In other news, Zuckerberg explained his thoughts on life and death in a recent podcast.
The Meta CEO has plans to create his own virtual worlds and recently revealed big plans for his metaverse.
And, people are increasingly unable to tell apart fake faces made by AI and real ones, new research suggests.
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