Gabelli Fund Subpoenaed by SEC

Gabelli Funds LLC, part of the asset-management company run by investor Mario Gabelli, was the unit receiving the subpoena, according to Dow Jones. Disclosure of the subpoena was made in an SEC filing Thursday from Gabelli Dividend & Income Trust. The Gabelli fund is closed-ended and invests mainly in dividend-paying equity securities.

 Richard Prins, a Gabelli lawyer stated that this was a “normal follow-up” to previously disclosed requests from the SEC, according to Dow Jones. The Gabelli fund is cooperating with the subpoena, and asserts that the requested information does not deal with any potential market timing or late trading at the fund. According to the Gabelli fund, an internal review has found no instances of such abuses at the company.

Gabelli Asset Management and Gabelli Dividend & Income Trust have admitted in other regulatory filings that the certain entities within the company received informational requests from the SEC and other officials connected with ongoing probes into mutual-fund abuses. Besides the SEC, New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has previously issued Gabelli entities a subpoena related to the matter.

Prins, the Gabelli lawyer stated that there is no indication that either the New York attorney general or the SEC is conducting a more formal inquiry or investigation into Gabelli entities.

This SEC action comes as part of a long line of mutual fund companies that have been caught in the dragnet of federal and state regulators intent on weeding out abusive trading practices in the industry, which started last year with the investigation of the hedge fund Canary Capital Partners (See Ripples of Canary Fund Trading Probes Continue to Spread ).