Brazil's state-owned oil and gas company Petrobras on Monday fired an executive who used privileged information to buy shares of fuel distributor Ipiranga a few days before it was bought out.

Petrobras said the employee has worked for the company for 37 years, and had been recently promoted to the position of executive of the subsidiary oil and gas distributor BR. Petrobras did not reveal the name of the employee.

On March 19, Petrobras and two partners, petrochemicals firm Braskem and distributor Ultra, announced a deal to buy Ipiranga, the second-largest fuel distributor and refiner in Latin America's largest nation, for nearly 4 billion U.S. dollars in cash and stocks.

Last week, the government agency CVM, in charge of regulating the stock market, responded to a rumor of insider trading in the acquisition and investigated investors that negotiated Ipiranga's shares before the acquisition.

The agency said it has investigated two suspected investors, one of whom was the Petrobras employee. He allegedly gained up to 250,000 reais (about 121,360 U.S. dollars) from the Ipiranga shares he bought on March 13 and sold on March 19.

On March 23, CVM received a court order stating that the gains will not be paid to the investor.

Source: Xinhua