RIYADH — Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority (CMA) announced on Tuesday that it has referred a group comprising of more than 250 individuals, who belong to a social media program, to the Public Prosecution for legal action against them for violating CMA regulations. The violations included disclosure of internal information of companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) before it is announced in a regular manner by those companies on the Tadawul Group website (insider trading). The authority said in a statement that among the disclosed internal information were advertisements related to a company contracting with another company to provide cooperative health insurance services; positive financial results of one of the companies, and raising capital and distributing cash dividends to shareholders. The authority said that the supervisor of the group committed a number of violations such as circulating opinions related to companies listed on the Tadawul through the group with the aim of influencing their prices and gaining personal benefit from this; managing a number of investment portfolios without obtaining license from CMA, and exploiting those investment portfolios for committing violations involving manipulation and misleading in the Saudi Stock Exchange. According to the statement, it was found in the monitoring of the authority that a number of people committed violations related to disclosing internal information of companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange, and these people included those who work in companies listed in Tadawul. The Board of Directors of CMA issued its decision to refer a number of people involved in the violations to the Public Prosecution and this was after identifying their involvement in these crimes. The CMA said that the group supervisor was referred to the Public Prosecution after collecting evidence for his involvement in committing violations of Article 31 and 49 of the Capital Market Law, Article 5 of the Securities Business Regulations, and Article 2 and 8 of the Market Conduct Regulations. He was found accountable for managing a number of investment portfolios in the Tadawul without obtaining a license from CMA, and for committing, through these portfolios, actions that involve manipulation and misleading in the market's trading. The authority stated that this resulted from the suspicion of his trading through his investment portfolios and the investment portfolios managed by him on the shares of a number of companies listed in the Tadawul. The suspected cases included a number of violating behaviors represented by his responsibility and suspected entry of purchase orders with the aim of influencing the price of the security, entering purchase orders with the aim of achieving a high closing auction price and achieving a high closing price, entering a purchase order with prior knowledge of the existence of a similar selling order in terms of size, timing and price. The violations also include trading on (buying) the shares of a number of listed companies in the market, and then circulating opinions through the aforementioned group with the aim of influencing the share price, then trading it (selling) on the shares of companies on Stock Exchange that were affected by the circulated opinions and thus gaining personal benefit from this. The decision to refer the suspected persons to the Public Prosecution was based on violation of Article 50 of the Capital Market Law and Article Five of the Market Conduct Regulations. The suspects included a number of employees of companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange for disclosing internal information related to these companies before announcing them in a regular manner on the Tadawul Group website.
