Firing of an analyst in Citi Group

[rahul_mail]

I came across an article in the net on the firing of a Citigroup analyst in the US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-analyst-mark-mahaney-fired-techcrunch-leaks-2012-10

What happened: CCing Citi's communications team, a French reporter asked Mahaney for his opinion on YouTube. The comms team said Mahaney did not have time, but Mahaney answered the questions. The reporter told Citi's comms team that Mahaney had answered the questions. The comms team emailed Mahaney to ask what was going on. Later, the comms team tried to give Mahaney "post-approval" for the interview, and said that he had not shared private analysis, which he had.

My doubt on this episode is the following.

How can this be insider information when CitiGroup(external to Google) has this information on Youtube(owned by Google)? Couldn't the Citigroup have used the non-public financial details for buying the shares of Google and benefit?

Does the same happen in India as well where investment bankers are privy to upcoming quarterly results which are not in public domain?