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 large with an antitrust lawsuit, in accordance with the New York Post.
The timing couldn’t be extra suspect. Visa, one of the 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 together with opponents.
In keeping with the press release:
In keeping with 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 annually 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 internet of exclusionary agreements on retailers and banks. These agreements penalize Visa’s clients who route transactions to a unique debit community or different fee system.
In so doing, the criticism alleges, Visa locks up debit quantity, insulates itself from competitors, and smothers smaller, lower-priced opponents.
Visa additionally induces would-be opponents to develop into companions as an alternative of coming into the market as opponents 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 large 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 in opposition to Visa saying they illegally monopolized the US debit card market
Pelosi bought ~$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 bought ~$500K of Tesla and ~$536K of Visa $V pic.twitter.com/RGQoG4oW3F
— Nancy Pelosi Inventory Tracker ♟ (@PelosiTracker_) July 3, 2024
Nancy Pelosi’s workplace, after all, 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 she or he has no prior information or subsequent involvement in any transactions,” the congresswoman’s spokesperson advised 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 information and filings don’t lie. Although 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 yr, 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 yr, Paul Pelosi sold all of his NVIDIA stock simply someday earlier than Congress was set to vote on a invoice that might enhance home manufacturing of semiconductors.