Members and Candidates must not knowingly participate or assist in and must dissociate from any violation of such laws, rules, or regulations.
(Institute 16)
Institute, CFA. 2016 CFA Level I Volume 1 Ethical and Professional Standards and Quantitative Methods. CFA Institute, 07/2015. VitalBook file.
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Last I heard, ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse. How does “M & C must not knowingly participate or assist in violations” make sense?
It’s not addressing ignorance of the law; it’s addressing ignorance of the actions taken.
Bob asks you to send him some client files.
If you know that Bob is going to use the information in those files to blackmail the clients, you’ve violated the Standards.
If Bob plans to use the information for blackmail, but you don’t know that, you’ve not violated the Standards.
In either case, you shouldn’t ever trust Bob again.
Ah I see.
What about the point that members/candidates are not required to become experts an all the laws that could potentially govern their activities?
Where do you draw the line of knowing vs not knowing?
It’s beyond of the scope of the exam. It should be stated clearly in the question whether you knew or didn’t.
Gocha.
Is it just me or are a lot of the examples incomplete?
Standard II A Material Nonpublic Information, Application of the Standard Example 7
To me it’s not just Zito who is guilty of violation of this standard. Celement cause Zito to act on the information by divulging it.