Hong Kong markets watchdog to sue 60 companies and individuals for corporate fraud in first half of 2019
Legal action by Securities and Futures Commission will be the largest in its 30-year history
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission plans to take legal action against 60 listed companies and individuals in the first half of 2019, in what will be the largest legal action ever undertaken by the markets watchdog since its establishment in 1989, executive director Thomas Atkinson told the 2018 Refinitiv Pan Asian Regulatory Summit in the city on Wednesday.
The commission’s corporate fraud team has investigated 236 cases over the past two years, of which 28 were found to be particularly serious. Atkinson said some serious cases involved nefarious networks of listed companies, company directors and money lenders colluding to hide the real ownership of shareholdings in listed firms, as well as to conceal misconduct and malpractice that included the theft of assets from these companies.
Financial watchdog SFC vows to stamp out ‘fake’ stockbroker trading accounts
He said he expected the investigation would be completed by the end of this year. “After a reorganisation two years ago [that helped us] close the smaller, less important cases, these important, big cases are our top priority,” Atkinson told the summit.
The SFC is working with the Independent Commission Against Corruption, said Atkinson, and had suspended 14 listed companies, searched 200 offices and residential premises and collected more than 4,000 pieces of evidence, including phones and computers, so far.
In their largest corporate inquiry so far, starting in December 2017, the two commissions investigated Convoy Global Holdings and a number of related listed companies, and arrested its chairman, Quincy Wong Lee-man, as well as three of its former executives.
