Former Fed Governor Kugler violated financial trading rules, filings show

Former Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler is said to have engaged in several financial transactions that violated the central bank’s ethics rules, multiple outlets have reported.

That’s according to filings made public by the Office of Government Ethics on Nov. 15. They revealed that Kugler filed the disclosures in September. The forms show that Federal Reserve ethics officials would not certify that Kugler followed the central bank’s ethics rules and referred her disclosures to the Fed’s inspector general.

A Fed official told Reuters that before resigning, Kugler asked Fed Chair Jerome Powell for a waiver to fix the disclosure issues and address investing rule violations tied to her spouse’s trades — including individual stock transactions and trades made around Fed policy meetings. The request was reportedly denied.

As a result, Kugler missed a July 2025 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting for personal reasons and, shortly after, resigned on Aug. 1.

Kugler, an appointee of President Joe Biden in 2023, was supposed to serve her term through Jan. 31, 2026. President Donald Trump nominated Stephen Miran to serve the remainder of her term.

The Nov. 15 filings come a year after Kugler reported four trades that violated the Fed’s stricter rules on personal trading. These mandate that officials cannot trade during blackout periods before interest rate decisions, and since 2022, they must hold investments for at least a year.

Kugler said the transactions, which included banned stock trades and trades during blackout periods before Fed meetings, were made accidentally by her husband, Ignacio Donoso.

“Consistent with her September 15, 2024, disclosure, certain trading activity was carried out by Dr. Kugler’s spouse, without Dr. Kugler’s knowledge and she affirms that her spouse did not intend to violate any rules or policies,” an endnote in the filing reads.

The new filings list includes several additional 2024 trades, including stock purchases and sales within weeks of each other, along with two that occurred just days before FOMC meetings.

They include multiple trades in Cava Group stock from March to May; a purchase and sale of Southwest Airlines shares ahead of the Fed’s April 30–May 1 meeting; an April purchase of Apple stock worth $100,000 to $250,000; and an October sale of Caterpillar stock valued at $50,00 to $100,000.

Neither Kugler nor the Federal Reserve immediately responded to HousingWire‘s request for comment.