A former director of biopharmaceutical company, Chinook Therapeutics, has been sentenced to prison for insider trading related to the company’s $3.2 billion sale to Novartis in 2023, a fraud detected through data analysis by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Rouzbeh “Ross” Haghighat, who was a member of Chinook’s board of directors and on the board’s audit committee, alerted four friends and family about the impending sale and urged them to buy stock in Chinook. Haghighat and the four did buy stock based on the material, non-public information Haghighat provided, and together they profited more than $600,000 after the sale, according to the grand jury indictment, filed May 22, 2025, with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
