An executive at a securities firm, along with a spouse and acquaintances, was detected by the financial authorities and referred to prosecutors on suspicion of reaping unfair profits by using nonpublic information learned while handling tender offers and other duties.
The Securities and Futures Commission under the Financial Services Commission said on the 20th that at its 10th regular meeting it filed a complaint with prosecutors against eight people, including a securities firm executive and the executive's spouse and acquaintances, on suspicion of violating the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act's ban on using material nonpublic information.
The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) also imposed the highest statutory level of penalty surcharges on eight individuals who received nonpublic information from them and conducted transactions, for violating the ban on acts disrupting market order. Secondary recipients of the information are fined 1.5 times their unfair gains, and tertiary recipients 1.25 times.
According to the stock price manipulation joint response team's investigation, the securities firm executive and a spouse, among others, are suspected of concentrating pre-disclosure purchases of shares in 15 listed companies using nonpublic information obtained in the course of work related to tender offers from May 2023 to September 2025, then selling after the information was disclosed to pocket unfair gains.
In particular, the securities firm executive was found to have conducted transactions using a borrowed-name account in the name of a spouse's acquaintance. The spouse also was found to have copied the husband's method and used another acquaintance's borrowed-name account. The joint response team said it identified the actual trading principal and the collusive relationship through fund tracing and searches and seizures.
The eight who received the nonpublic information from them are also suspected of disrupting market order by using the information to buy shares at low prices ahead of retail investors and, when stock prices rose following related disclosures such as tender offers, selling at high prices to realize gains.
The joint response team plans to actively cooperate during the prosecutorial investigation as well. Depending on the results, the eight initial users of the nonpublic information could face additional penalty surcharges of up to two times their unfair gains.