Archegos Capital’s Bill Hwang seeks dismissal of charges for ‘deceitful’ US conduct

Hwang was duped into assisting the government during meetings with investigators, his lawyer Lawrence Lustberg said

Hwang was arrested in April and charged with fraud over the collapse of Archegos, which at one point held market positions valued at US$160 billion

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Archegos Capital Management owner Bill Hwang asked a US judge on Friday to toss out fraud charges against him because prosecutors allegedly engaged in ‘deceitful’ conduct in the early days of the government’s probe. Photo: Getty Images/TNS

Published: 11:17am, 4 Dec 2022

Archegos Capital Management’s Bill Hwang asked a judge to toss out fraud charges against him because prosecutors allegedly engaged in “deceitful” conduct in the early days of the government’s investigation.

Hwang was duped into assisting the government in a number of meetings with investigators who did not tell him when they had decided he was more than a mere “subject” of the investigation, leaving open the possibility that he would not be charged, his lawyer said in a motion to dismiss the indictment late on Friday. Hwang is expected to go on trial in October 2023.

“The government had made its decision long before numerous sessions in which the government elicited information from Mr Hwang and his counsel that would never have been revealed but for the misimpression, fuelled by the government, that the decision of whether to indict had not been made,” Hwang’s lawyer, Lawrence Lustberg, said in a filing in federal court in Manhattan.

Hwang and former Archegos chief financial officer Patrick Halligan, who will go on trial with him, have pleaded not guilty. Hwang was arrested on April 27 and charged with fraud over the collapse of Archegos, which at one point held market positions valued at US$160 billion, according to prosecutors. The two face decades in prison if convicted.

Credit Suisse is among the banks that lost US$10 billion from the implosion of Archegos. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

The press office for the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment.