Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, dumped over $500,000 value of Visa inventory simply weeks earlier than the Division of Justice slapped the monetary big with an antitrust lawsuit, in response to the New York Post.
The timing couldn’t be extra suspect. Visa, one of the crucial dominant gamers within the debit card market, is now dealing with prices of monopolizing the business.
The DOJ’s antitrust unit claims Visa has abused its market energy, forcing monetary tech corporations to work with them whereas penalizing those that attempt to go along with rivals.
Based on the press release:
Based on the criticism, greater than 60% of debit transactions in the USA run on Visa’s debit community, permitting it to cost over $7 billion in charges every year for processing these transactions.
The criticism additional alleges that Visa illegally maintains its monopoly energy by insulating itself from competitors.
For instance, Visa wields its dominance, monumental scale, and centrality to the debit ecosystem to impose an online of exclusionary agreements on retailers and banks. These agreements penalize Visa’s clients who route transactions to a unique debit community or various fee system.
In so doing, the criticism alleges, Visa locks up debit quantity, insulates itself from competitors, and smothers smaller, lower-priced rivals.
Visa additionally induces would-be rivals to develop into companions as a substitute of coming into the market as rivals by providing beneficiant financial incentives and threatening punitive extra charges.
Because the criticism alleges, Visa coopted the competitors as a result of it feared shedding share, revenues, or being displaced by one other debit community altogether.
And what was Paul Pelosi doing whereas the DOJ constructed its case? Promoting off huge chunks of Visa inventory.
On July 3, a disclosure confirmed that the previous Speaker of the Home’s partner unloaded 2,000 shares of Visa, valued someplace between $500,000 and $1 million. All this, simply three months earlier than the federal hammer dropped.
BREAKING :
The DOJ plans to open up a lawsuit towards Visa saying they illegally monopolized the US debit card market
Pelosi offered ~$1 Million {dollars} of Visa $V simply 2 months in the past
Wild.
— Nancy Pelosi Inventory Tracker ♟ (@PelosiTracker_) September 24, 2024
BREAKING: Pelosi is again on the Buying and selling Desk
She simply purchased ~$5M of Broadcom $AVGO and one other $1.2M of Nvidia $NVDA
She additionally offered ~$500K of Tesla and ~$536K of Visa $V pic.twitter.com/RGQoG4oW3F
— Nancy Pelosi Inventory Tracker ♟ (@PelosiTracker_) July 3, 2024
Nancy Pelosi’s workplace, in fact, was fast to disclaim any wrongdoing. Her spokesperson claimed that Pelosi has no involvement in any inventory transactions.
“Speaker Pelosi doesn’t personal any shares, and he or she has no prior information or subsequent involvement in any transactions,” the congresswoman’s spokesperson informed The Post.
Visa shares plummeted by 5.5% after the information of the lawsuit hit the markets. And but, the Pelosis dodged that bullet by a matter of weeks. Coincidence? Skeptics are proper to ask: How a lot did Nancy Pelosi know? Did her perch as a high Democratic energy participant give her insider information that her husband conveniently acted upon?
Public data and filings don’t lie. Regardless that Paul Pelosi’s inventory dump didn’t happen on the top of the market fallout, the timing of the sale—mere weeks earlier than a bombshell antitrust lawsuit—raises a cloud of suspicion.
Final 12 months, Paul Pelosi dumped 20,000 shares of Google inventory in December – a month earlier than the Division of Justice and Merrick Garland filed their antitrust lawsuit.
In 2022, Paul Pelosi exercised $1 million to $5 million Alphabet name choices earlier than Democrats proposed a congressional inventory buying and selling ban. In the identical 12 months, Paul Pelosi sold all of his NVIDIA stock simply at some point earlier than Congress was set to vote on a invoice that may enhance home manufacturing of semiconductors.
