Fed official broke ethics rules but didn't violate insider trading laws, probe finds

WASHINGTON — A government investigation into Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic's securities trades and investments has found he violated several of the central bank's ethics policies.

The Fed rules violations “created the appearance” that Bostic acted on confidential Fed information and that he had a conflict of interest, but the Fed's Office of Inspector General concluded there were no violations of federal insider trading or conflict of interest laws, according to a report issued Wednesday.

The probe reviewed financial trades and investments in a roughly five-year period starting in 2017 made by several investment managers on Bostic's behalf — transactions that in October 2022 he said he had been initially unaware of.

Among the findings, investigators concluded that securities trades were made on Bostic's behalf multiple times during “blackout” periods around meetings of the central bank's policy-making Federal Open Market Committee. The investigation also found that Bostic at times did not report securities transactions and holdings, or failed to do so accurately, on annual disclosure forms.

Bostic also at one point was in breach of the Fed's policy against holding more than $50,000 in U.S. Treasury bonds or notes.

In 2022, Bostic acknowledged that many of his financial trades and investments inadvertently violated the Fed's ethics rules and said he took action to revise all his financial disclosures.

At the time, the board of the Atlanta Fed accepted Bostic’s explanations for the oversights and announced no further actions.

Still, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell asked the Fed’s Office of Inspector General to review Bostic’s financial disclosures.