Drawing a line under the UK financial watchdog’s eight-and-a-half year insider dealing inquiry, a former Deutsche  Bank managing director and an accountant have been sent to prison for “persistent, prolonged, deliberate, dishonest behavior”.

For his part in an elaborate scam that prosecutors said made more than £6.9m between 2006 and 2010, Martyn Dodgson was sentenced to four-and-a-half years on Thursday. The 44-year-old financier had advised the government during the financial crisis. It is the longest UK prison term handed down for the crime.

A three-and-a-half years sentence was given at Southwark crown court in London to a 56-year-old former finance director of Topshop, Andrew Hind. Both were convicted of conspiracy to insider trade on Monday.

A maximum seven-year sentence is permissible in the UK for insider dealing – using confidential information to trade on the stock market. But the longest term handed down to date had been four years.

Judge Jeffrey Pegden QC described Dodgson and Hind as having taken part in “persistent, prolonged, deliberate”, dishonest behavior as he sentenced them on Thursday bringing to end a a 12-week trial.

The Financial Services Authority – now replaced by the Financial Conduct Authority – and the then Serious Organised Crime Agency jointly conducted the investigation that was dubbed Operation Tabernula. The FCA has described the investigation as its “largest and most complex insider dealing investigation” and it cost nearly £14m.

At earlier dates, Graeme Shelley, Paul Milsom and Julian Rifat pleaded guilty. While Shelley was handed a two-year suspended sentence, Traders Milsom and Rifat were given sentences of two years and of 19 months with a £100,000 fine respectively.

Hind was alleged to have passed information on to two other men to trade on their behalf after he received inside information from Dodgson that he had discovered through his work, the FCA alleged. The profits which the FCA claimed totalled £7.4m were then split within the group.

The three other alleged participants were all acquitted.

The case involved serious offending over a number of years, said Mark Steward, the director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA.

“Insider dealing is ever more detectable and provable. And this case shows lengthy terms of imprisonment, not profits, are the real result,” Steward said.

Dodgson had moved to Deutsche Bank in October 2008 as a director and was later promoted and is one of the most senior City figures ever to be charged with insider dealing. The Deutsche Bank team advising the government on its stakes in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group also had Dodgson in it.

“Dodgson and Hind tried to prevent us from uncovering their insider dealing by using unregistered mobile phones, encoded and encrypted records, and transferring benefit using cash and payments in kind,” said Oliver Higgins, Branch Commander at the National Crime Agency which was part of the investigations with the FCA.

It was still substantially shorter than it would have been in the US, said Elly Proudlock from law firm WilmerHale’s UK investigations and criminal litigation practice even though the sentence is a record for the UK.

“Although the sentence imposed on Mr Dodgson is the highest yet for insider dealing in the UK, it still falls significantly short of the sort of sentences we see coming out of the US. It will be interesting to see whether the government decides to follow the Bank of England’s recommendation to increase the maximum sentence for market abuse offences to 10 years, which would bring it in line with a number of other economic offences,” she said.

(Adapted from The Guardian)