According to a report from The New York Post, Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sold more than $500,000 worth of Visa stock weeks before the company’s antitrust lawsuit.
In July, Pelosi sold 2,000 shares of Visa between $500,000 and $1 million, according to records. The Post explained that the disclosure form was marked with “SP,” indicating that a spouse was involved in the transaction.
The disclosure showed that Pelosi also sold 2,500 shares of Tesla and purchased stock in Nvidia and Broadcom at the same time.
When Pelosi sold the stock, there was no public knowledge that an antitrust lawsuit against Visa was forthcoming.
“Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks, and she has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions,” the congresswoman’s spokesperson told the outlet.
The antitrust lawsuit against Visa alleges that the company has “unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing – but the price of nearly everything.”
According to a press release, Visa uses its “dominance to thwart the growth of its existing competitors and prevent others from developing new and innovative alternatives.”
“Visa profits from its monopoly by collecting a higher fraction of each debit transaction than it would if it faced competition. Visa’s schemes are largely invisible to consumers, in part because its debit transaction fees make up a relatively small fraction of each transaction, but total to billions of dollars annually,” the lawsuit says. “Collectively, however, Visa’s systematic efforts to limit competition for debit transactions have resulted in significant additional fees imposed on American consumers and businesses and slowed innovation in the debit payments ecosystem.”
The lawsuit claims that without action taken against Visa, the company will “continue to insulate itself from competition and subvert the competitive process in this essential industry that fuels U.S. commerce, all the while enriching itself at the expense of the American people who ultimately bear the brunt of Visa’s unlawful monopoly and the lack of competition its conduct has wrought.”
