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by Mike Caswell

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed criminal insider trading charges against Cedric Canas Maillard, a former executive at Banco Santander SA who bought Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan before a 2010 takeover offer. Prosecutors claim that he made $917,239 buying highly leveraged securities of the company. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) He made the purchase based on information he obtained through his position, according to the government.

New York prosecutors unsealed the charges on Tuesday, Feb. 3. They claim that Mr. Canas, 41, bought 30,000 contracts for difference in Potash Corp. in August, 2010, just before the company received a $45-billion takeover bid from BHP Billiton. Once the bid became public, Potash Corp. went to $143.17 from $112.15 on the New York Stock Exchange. That same day, Mr. Canas liquidated his entire position, prosecutors claim. At the time of the trades Mr. Canas was a high level employee of Banco Santander, which was an adviser to BHP.

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