Republican Rick Scott is running to become the next governor of Florida. But, guess what, the State of Florida once sued Scott for insider trading–and not so long ago.
miamiherald.com: In 1997, as the FBI unleashed a massive criminal investigation of Scott’s hospital chain, Florida’s State Board of Administration filed a civil lawsuit accusing Scott and his fellow hospital directors of profiting from a culture of corruption and selling stock 23 days before federal agents raided the company’s offices in Texas.
Ultimately, the insider trading complaint was dismissed by a judge without trial, but not before an appeals court said that there was a chance that Scott should have known “of the arrangements that allegedly violated health care laws and regulations.”
The Florida civil suit was separate from the federal investigation launched on Scott’s former company of which he was CEO, Columbia/HCA, and which led to a whopping $1.7 billion in fines being paid to the government. Filed in the Tennessee state court, the Florida civil suit was dropped in favor of the larger federal case that leveled many of the same claims as the Florida state suit. Scott was included among the list of defendants in the federal case, but was forced out as the company’s CEO on July 25, 1997, about two weeks before the civil actions were filed.
