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by Mike Caswell

California resident Amit Raj Beri, one of those who pleaded guilty to charges arising from the promotion of Vancouver's Emerald Health Pharmaceuticals Inc. through $4.2-million in hidden payments to analysts, has received nine months in prison. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.) Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Beri was part of a conspiracy that included sham consulting agreements and phony invoices. He and others, including Vancouver's Avtar Dhillon, moved payments from hidden insiders to analysts, the government said.

Mr. Beri's sentence is contained in a judgment filed on Thursday, Oct. 30, in federal court in Los Angeles. In addition to the nine months in prison, Mr. Beri must serve one year of supervised release, with three months of that year to be under home confinement. He is also subject to the standard terms of release, with those terms including drug tests and an order barring alcohol. In addition, he must pay a $15,000 fine.

The sentence is a loss for Mr. Beri, who had asked that the judge not send him to jail. Ahead of sentencing, he said that his crime arose when he met Mr. Dhillon, a "highly regarded member of the Sikh community" who he trusted. After several conversations with Mr. Dhillon, he helped arrange a scheme in which a group of analysts prepared promotional pieces on Emerald Health, he explained. Mr. Beri said that he saw the transaction, which arose when he had recently arrived in the U.S., "as a way of expanding [his] business connections here."

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