P.M. BRIEFING : 3 Charged With Insider Trading

The Securities and Exchange Commission said today it charged two former Merrill Lynch and Co. Inc. employees and a New York lawyer with making illegal trades based on tips that originated with Dennis Levine.

Levine, a former merger specialist at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., was arrested in 1986 in what has become Wall Street’s longest-running insider trading scandal.

In today’s action, the SEC’s New York office said it charged Brian Campbell, a former account executive at Merrill Lynch and at Smith Barney Harris Upham and Co. Inc.; Carlos Zubillaga, a citizen of Venezuela who also worked for Merrill Lynch, and Kevin Barry, a corporate lawyer who had worked at a New York City law firm.

The SEC said Campbell, Barry, Zubillaga and BCM Management Inc., a corporation formed by Barry and Campbell, received inside information from about March, 1984, through June, 1985. The SEC’s action also charged BCM.

The SEC alleged that Levine, the former Drexel mergers specialist, had illegally purchased securities or options to buy securities in overseas accounts at Bank Leu International Ltd.