SEC CITES CEL-SCI CHIEF ON STOCK-FILING LAPSES
Sandra SugawaraWashington Post Staff Writer
May 8, 1992; Page c11
The Securities and Exchange Commission has cited Maximilian de
Clara, president of the biotechnology firm Cel-Sci Corp. of
Alexandria, for repeatedly failing to file stock trading documents
on time. The SEC said that from August 1988 through June 19, 1991,
de Clara filed late 16 times for sales of 2,324,222 shares of
Cel-Sci stock totaling more than $2.6 million. He submitted the
documents to the SEC as much as 31 weeks late.
Bill Hart, de Clara's Denver attorney, said that problems arose
because de Clara lives overseas. His main residence is in London,
but he travels extensively, Hart said. The sales documents from
his stockbrokers often took considerable time to catch up with
him, the lawyer said. Sometimes they were sent by ship, and in
some cases his broker failed to send him the documents at all,
Hart said.
SEC regulations require that when top corporate officials sell or
buy stock in their company, they must inform the SEC 10 days after
the end of the month. That is, if the sale takes place in May,
they must notify the SEC by June 10. The requirement is intended
to enable the public to know how top corporate officials assess
the company and to guard against improper trading on the basis of
inside information.
An SEC official said that the agency has taken similar
administrative action against violators at two other companies in
the past six months. Although tardiness in filing the insider
trading forms has been widespread in the past year, the official
said the agency has targeted only repeat offenders with a history
of filing late.
The SEC official said that de Clara appeared to file his
statements in batches. For instance, de Clara filed four tardy
statements on March 8, 1989, for stock sales from July 1988 to
January 1989.
Geert R. Kersten, chief financial officer of Cel-Sci, said
that last July, he took over responsibility for collecting the
brokers' sales documents and making sure that de Clara filed on
time.
Cel-Sci is engaged primarily in acquiring and financing clinical
trials of natural human interleukin-2 and lymphokine-related
products
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