Attorneys seek a year to prepare for traders' trial; another pleads

Attorneys representing indicted Japanese yen traders Wednesdayrequested more than a year to prepare for trial, saying they need thetime to pore over "massive" quantities of documents and at least 250hours of secret tape recordings from the FBI investigation of allegedtrading fraud.

Also Wednesday, 39-year-old yen trader James Marren of RiverForest pleaded not guilty to illegal trading charges that stem fromthe investigation.

In a hearing before U.S. District Judge George Marovich, defenseattorneys representing more than a dozen yen traders at the ChicagoMercantile Exchange who were indicted on fraud and racketeeringcharges earlier this month asked for a September, 1990, trial. Theysaid the one-year lag is needed so they can digest the "roomful" ofdocuments and hundreds of hours of tapes recorded by undercover FBIagents. So far, 46 traders have been targeted from the Merc yen andSwiss franc pits and Chicago Board of Trade soybean and U.S. Treasurybond pits.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Gillogly argued for an earliertrial, saying, "September, frankly, is too far out." EarlierWednesday, federal prosecutors and defense lawyers had agreed toconclude pre-trial motions by March 5, 1990.

Marovich appeared to side with Gillogly, telling the crowd oflawyers standing before his bench that the more time he provided, themore time they would take. "Earlier is better," the judge said. "Mypreference is closer to March than September." He then postponedscheduling the trial date until Sept. 29, nine days after theagreed-upon deadline for the government to provide defense attorneyswith the first batch of evidence.

Prosecutors have agreed to provide access to 250 hours of tapes,as well as to trading documents that run to what defense attorneyAnthony Onesto described as "the upper thousands. The discoverymaterial in this case is massive," Onesto said.

Lawyers for the yen traders told Marovich they suspect thesecret tapes will be so difficult to decipher "that it will takemany, many multiples of the 250 hours" to transcribe all of them.Defense attorneys also said they expect to get additional tapesbefore trial, including those dealing with the three indicted yentraders who have pleaded guilty and agreed to be governmentwitnesses.

At Wednesday's hearing, Marren became the 14th yen trader toplead not guilty out of 21 who have been indicted. James Streicher,the attorney who represented Marren Wednesday, said, "He didn'tdefraud anybody. He's unhappy it will take so long to go to trial."

Three of the indicted yen traders have pleaded guilty; fourhave not yet been arraigned. Neither have any of 19 traders from theCBOT soybean pit, who are scheduled to appear in court late nextweek. The charges against the 46 indicted traders includeracketeering, mail fraud, commodities fraud, filing false income taxreturns and lying to federal investigators.