Tory Author Archer Cleared in Insider-Trade Investigation

Best-selling novelist and Conservative politician Jeffrey Archer declared Friday that he is “grateful to have been exonerated” after Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry cleared him of any suspicion of insider trading in stock shares.

The department announced that Archer was under investigation just weeks before a Cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister John Major. Archer had been widely expected to receive a government post or the Conservative Party chairmanship, but the announcement foreclosed his chances.

Trade and Industry Minister Michael Heseltine received the investigators’ report a day before last week’s Cabinet changes but declined to disclose the findings.

Heseltine, a political rival of Archer’s, has been criticized for making the investigation public in the first place and then not immediately revealing that Archer had been exonerated.

Some observers speculated that Archer was the victim of political “dirty tricks.”