Pharma Scion in Trade Case Now Seeks $26 Million Bail

(Bloomberg) -- The son of a wealthy Greek pharmaceutical executive proposed an elaborate $26 million bail package to get out of a U.S. jail while he awaits trial over his alleged role in a global insider-trading ring.

Telemaque Lavidas is one of six people accused in what prosecutors said was a scheme that generated tens of millions of dollars. Lavidas got inside tips about Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. from his father, Athanase Lavidas, a former Ariad board member and the chief executive of Lavipharm SA, and passed it to a friend who used the information to earn almost $2 million in profits, prosecutors said. Lavidas has denied wrongdoing; his father isn’t charged.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote initially denied a $500,000 bail proposal offered by Telemaque Lavidas’s legal team, saying he might flee to avoid prosecution. Instead, she consigned him to the Manhattan federal lockup where accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in August.

Lavidas, who was born in New York, is back with a pumped-up bail proposal: a $25 million bond, to be secured by his family’s $11.2 million Upper East Side luxury condominium, where he would be confined, wearing a GPS-equipped ankle bracelet, with his pregnant wife and their 16-month-old child. The bond would be cosigned by his mother, wife and three sisters, all of whom would be on the hook if he runs before his January trial, his lawyers said.

In addition, four friends and family members would sign an additional $1 million bond, with three pledging their homes as security. Lavidas would also consider hiring private security guards to watch him.

“There is no possibility that Mr. Lavidas would forever give up his ability to live in the United States -- where he is a citizen and has lived the vast majority of his adult life -- as well as most of the western world, and subject his family and close friends to enormous financial hardship, in order to become a fugitive from justice,” his lawyers said in the letter.

The case is U.S. v Nikas, 19-cr-716, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Van Voris in federal court in Manhattan at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net

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