By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled charges against eight men accused of belonging to a global network that made tens of millions of dollars trading on inside information about the finances and merger plans of numerous companies for years.

Federal prosecutors in Boston said the insider trading scheme ran from 2016 to 2024 and was led by Samy Khouadja, a former Merrill Lynch banker in France; Eamma Safi, who co-owned a French restaurant with Khouadja; and Singapore citizen Zhi Ge.

Safi is in U.S. custody, and Ge was provisionally arrested in 2024 in Singapore and is subject to extradition proceedings. The other six defendants are considered fugitives, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Their lawyers could not be identified or did not respond to requests for comment.

Prosecutors allege Khouadja, Safi and Ge recruited investment bankers and other corporate insiders to supply them with confidential information about a variety of publicly traded companies including U.S.-based ones that they and their co-defendants then traded on.

They also recruited other traders in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, to trade on the information they received in exchange for a share of their insider trading profits, prosecutors said.

The other alleged traders charged in the indictment were Christophe Dong of France; Julien Liu of France and Hong Kong; Patrick Chou of France and Hong Kong; Cheuk Yue Lee of Hong Kong; and Dev Ananth Durai of Singapore.

The indictment said the insider information included that Britain-based drugmaker AstraZeneca in 2020 planned to acquire Alexion Pharmaceuticals for $39 billion; that Louis Vuitton owner LVMH would seek to acquire jeweler Tiffany in 2019; and medical device maker Stryker's plans to acquire rival Wright Medical that same year.

Prosecutors said the defendants leaked information they obtained to journalists to make a trading profit once news about their illicit tips became public and used "burner" cell phones and encrypted messaging applications to conceal their activity.

They spoke in code as well, referring to money as "greens," insider trading as "running," a yet-to-be-announced deal as a "race" and another company's prospective merger partners as "girls" and "models," the indictment said.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)