Federal authorities have arrested a French doctor who allegedly tipped a hedge-fund manager with confidential information after the death of a patient in a clinical drug trial and charged him with engaging in an insider-trading scheme.

The parallel criminal and civil complaints against Yves Benhamou, a 50-year-old Paris-based doctor specialising in liver diseases, alleged that in late 2007 and early 2008 his tips enabled the hedge-fund firm to avoid $30mi of losses by selling shares in Human Genome Sciences ahead of negative news about the company's trial of a drug for Hepatitis C, the liver disease.