SEC Charges Ex-Janus Execs in Fund Case

The Securities and Exchange Commission still is tying up loose ends from the mutual fund trading scandal.

The agency Monday alleged that three former executives at Janus Capital Group Inc. had helped some clients make abusive fund trades.

Warren Lammert, who ran the Janus Mercury Fund, former Executive Vice President Lars Soderberg and former sales director Lance Newcomb violated federal laws by “allowing or facilitating” improper trading earlier this decade, the SEC said in a complaint.

Janus was among the first firms implicated by New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer in September 2003 in his investigation of trading abuses in the fund industry. Most of the abuses involved fund companies secretly granting favored investors the right to engage in short-term trading strategies that might have harmed long-term shareholders.

Janus paid $226 million in penalties in April 2004 to settle with regulators.

“I categorically deny any and all of their charges,” Newcomb said Monday. “I did not organize, negotiate or approve any type of market-timing arrangement at Janus.”

Lammert, who left Janus in 2003, wasn’t available for comment at his office at Granite Point Capital in Boston. Soderberg couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Janus spokeswoman Shelley Peterson declined to comment, saying the case was “a legal matter between the SEC and former employees.”

The SEC is seeking unspecified monetary penalties from the three men. Their cases will be scheduled for a hearing before an administrative law judge.