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Former BP Employee Settles Insider-Trading Charges

The U.S. government says a former BP employee who was a coordinator during the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has settled federal charges of using confidential information on the seriousness of the spill to profit illegally from trading in BP stock.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government says a former BP employee who was a coordinator during the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has settled federal charges of using confidential information on the seriousness of the spill to profit illegally from trading in BP stock.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement of civil insider-trading charges with Keith Seilhan, saying he agreed to pay $224,118. Seilhan neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegations but agreed to refrain from future violations of securities laws.

The agency says Seilhan was a crisis manager in BP's incident command center in Houma, Louisiana, and coordinated the initial cleanup operations after the spill that occurred April 20, 2010.

The SEC says he received private company information on the magnitude of the disaster, such as estimates of oil flow.

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