The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced new charges against individuals that it alleges were involved in widespread and brazen international schemes of serial insider trading that yielded at least U.S.$6.7 million of illicit gains.

The SEC claims that the schemes were orchestrated by two Goldman Sachs employees: a research analyst in its fixed-income division and another former employee. The complaint alleges that in one scheme, the pair persuaded a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Merrill Lynch to provide tips on upcoming mergers in return for a share of the trading profits. In another scheme, it alleges that they recruited two individuals to obtain jobs at a printing plant in Wisconsin, steal advance copies of Business Week magazine and tip them off on the names of companies discussed favorably in the “Inside Wall Street” column before the magazine became public.

The SEC says that they traded on the inside information, initially in an account in their own name and later, in accounts in the names of others in Europe and the U.S. It also claims that they tipped several individuals in the U.S. and Europe in return for a share of their trading profits.

In total, the SEC alleges that the Goldman employees traded in at least 25 stocks within one year based on inside information obtained through these schemes. The commission’s complaint charges 13 individuals in the U.S. and Europe for their roles in the scheme. None of these allegations have been proven.

This complaint follows two prior complaints filed by the commission in August 2005 charging insider trading in Reebok securities ahead of the Reebok-adidas-Salomon AG merger announcement, successfully freezing over $6 million in trading proceeds. These latest charges were made in a second amended complaint, which the commission submitted to the court. The filing of the new complaint is subject to court approval.

Linda Chatman Thomsen, the director of the commission’s division of enforcement, said, “We will move quickly and aggressively prosecute cases such as this where fraudsters try to steal market-moving information from our premier financial institutions.”

The commission alleges that, as a result of trading in various securities on the basis of material, non-public information obtained pursuant to the Merrill Lynch Scheme or the Business Week Scheme, the defendants engaged in illegal insider trading. Among other things, the complaint seeks permanent injunctive relief, the disgorgement of all illegal profits plus prejudgment interest, the imposition of civil monetary penalties, and orders requiring the defendants to repatriate to the U.S. proceeds of the fraud in accounts outside the U.S.