Public documents show that Nancy Pelosi's husband sold more than $500,000 worth of Visa stock — less than three months before federal antitrust charges were levied against the credit card giant.
A lawsuit was filed against Visa on Tuesday alleging that the company Illegally monopolized the debit card market — the result of a years-long review by the Justice Department’s competition unit.
According to court documents, Visa allegedly used its dominant market position to penalize customers and merchants who use competing payment processors.
The antitrust police have also alleged that Visa forces financial technology companies to work with it and threatens to punish those who do not do so.
The Post has sought comment from Visa.
Meanwhile, Christopher Josephs, The tech entrepreneur who runs the “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker” On X, a screenshot of a congressional filing dated July 3 was posted showing that Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker, sold 2,000 shares of Visa worth between $500,000 and $1 million.
The disclosure form shows Pelosi's transactions are marked “SP,” or spouse – Reference to husband PaulSan Francisco-based venture capitalist and real estate investor.
At the time Paul Pelosi sold Visa shares, there was no public indication that any anti-competition lawsuit against the company was imminent.
Visa shares fell 5% in late afternoon trading Tuesday.
“Speaker Pelosi owns no stock and has no prior knowledge of or subsequent involvement in any transactions,” a spokeswoman for the congresswoman told the Post.
Nevertheless, critics have claimed that Nancy Pelosi's position in Washington may give her access to non-public information relevant to the markets.
“At various critical junctures in history, members of our government have engaged in trades at times when their conflicts have been questioned,” Ron Geffner, a former enforcement attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Post.
Geffner said the appearance of unfairness should be minimized by taking other factors into account.
“Before public opinion judges Pelosi unfairly, it is important to determine who was involved in the transaction on her behalf and whether it was part of a broader reshuffle in her portfolio,” Geffner said.
The July 3 disclosure also showed that Paul Pelosi sold 2,500 shares of Tesla. Also, he bought shares in Nvidia and Broadcom.
Nancy Pelosi, who remains a key power broker in the Democratic Party In spite of this Resigned from the post of Speaker of the House early last year, has a nine-digit net worth because of Her and her husband's extensive stock and investment portfolio.
San Francisco Democrat has long opposed the call of a bipartisan group of lawmakers To ban MLAs and their spouses From trading stocks Given the conflict of interest involved in this.
In 2021, Visa disclosed in a regulatory filing that the Justice Department's antitrust unit had sought information about potential violations of laws governing competitive behavior in the marketplace, According to the Financial Times.
Federal antitrust investigators are reportedly probing Visa's relationships with companies such as Square, Stripe, and PayPal.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Visa is accused of offering this to these companies Financial incentives for those companies to stop using competing payment processors.
The Justice Department was reportedly keen to investigate whether Visa had forced PayPal to encourage customers to make payments using Visa-branded cards.
Visa is also accused of offering lower fees and other incentives to Cash App, a subsidiary of Square, on the condition that it induce customers to conduct transactions using Visa-branded services.
Visa said it was asked to hand over information related to the company's conduct in its U.S.-based debit card business.
“We believe Visa's U.S. debit practices are consistent with applicable laws,” the company said at the time.
Last year, Visa said federal prosecutors had sought even more documents as part of the same investigation.
The San Francisco-based company said at the time that it was cooperating with the investigation.
