Decision today on secrecy bid

By SIMON HENDERY

A High Court judge will this morning decide if the Herald can name a prominent Auckland businessman at the centre of an insider-trading investigation.

The man, who is involved in more than a dozen companies, has admitted making $40,000 last year by trading Fletcher Paper shares after receiving inside information on the company.

But the businessman identified in a Securities Commission report into the affair only as "EF" took late-night legal action on Tuesday to stop the Herald publishing his name.

During a hearing in Auckland yesterday in which he sought a continuation of the gagging order, EF told Justice Robert Fisher he had made an "unequivocal" pact 18 months ago with a Business Herald reporter that the paper would keep his identity secret. The Herald denies any such arrangement.

In May 1999, EF gave the Herald an internal Fletcher Challenge e-mail he had surreptitiously acquired from his brother-in-law, to whom it had been leaked by a relative within Fletchers.

His place down the chain of people with access to the information meant he could not be prosecuted under current insider-trading laws.