Former BP official charged with insider trading

According to the SEC, Mr Seilhan would have lost around $100,000 if he had played by the rules and kept his shares until the extent of the damage was made public, but he ended up being fined more than that figure. The former BP worker has agreed to pay back $105,409, to cover his “ill-gotten gains”, as well as a civil penalty of the same amount and $13,300 in interest.

Daniel Hawke, who leads the SEC’s crackdowns on “market abuse”, warned against repeats of this sort of behaviour. “Corporate insiders must not misuse the material nonpublic information they receive while responding to unique or disastrous corporate events, even where they stand to suffer losses as a consequence of those events.”

Separately, BP has come under attack over its efforts to clean up the spill. Earlier this week, the oil giant issued a statement declaring that the “active clean-up” of the Gulf of Mexico had finally been brought to a close.

However, Coast Guard captain Thomas Sparks quickly poured cold water on the notion. “Let me be absolutely clear: This response is not over - not by a long shot,” he said.

Clean-up teams have patrolled 4,400 miles of coastline, cleaning up any patches of oil, but they are now having to go back over some of the same territory to address new deposits, he said.

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