In early 2017, House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway was among U.S. representatives who purchased stock in the Australian biomedical company that’s at the center of insider-trading charges against New York Rep. Chris Collins. The comparatively wealthy Conaway bought shares of Innate Immunotherapeutics in January and February 2017 through a Merrill Lynch account that he owns jointly with a family member, said the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
On financial disclosure reports, Conaway listed each of the purchases as being worth from $1,000-$15,000. A press aide was not immediately available for questions about how the Texas Republican decided to buy the shares or if he still owned them. A CPA by profession, Conaway ranked 48th in the House with an estimated net worth of nearly $11.6 million in 2015, the latest year available in rankings by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Three other Republican lawmakers also bought Innate stock in early 2017. It was “a time of intense scrutiny of Innate’s stock following revelations that then-Rep. Tom Price [Georgia Republican], now the secretary of Health and Human Services, had purchased between $50,001 and $100,000 in Innate stock last August in what has been called a ‘sweetheart deal,'” said CREW in March 2017.
Collins was arrested on charge of insider trading for alleging tipping off his son and others that a drug made by Innate had failed in a critical scientific trial, allowing them to sell their stock before the information became public. Over the weekend, Collins announced he would abandon his re-election campaign, reported The New York Times.