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| Entertainment venue boss suspected of inside trading |
SHANGHAI, Apr. 23 -- A "waitress" at an entertainment venue might be the source of a price-sensitive information leak that led to the biggest stock trading scandal in China so far this year, the Beijing News reported today.
Hangzhou police have launched a criminal investigation into the boss of an entertainment venue near the headquarters of the Shanghai-listed Zhejiang Hangxiao Steel Structure Co Ltd. The company is at the center of what could be a major stock-manipulation case as regulators step-up efforts to combat insider trading.
A senior official of the company is alleged to have told "a waitress" at the entertainment venue that the company had obtained a big order from overseas countries before the official announcement of the deal had been made, the report said.
Then the boss of the venue learned about the information from the "waitress" and allegedly invested a lot of money in the stock, which stimulated the price to jump by 10 percent for six days before the company announced the 34.4-billion-yuan (US$4.46 billion) contract on March 13, the report said.
The company received a notice from the China Securities Regulatory Commission on April 4, which said the watchdog was concerned the firm's share-price volatility may involve irregularities and that a regulatory probe would be launched.
The Shanghai bourse pledged to strengthen its monitoring system and strive to weed out abnormal stock trading. It would also boost monitoring of mutual funds and minimize potential advantages and profit in transactions between related parties.
The exchange gave out 77 warnings to brokerages about suspected abnormal share trading in the first quarter of this year. It has found some cases of "stock manipulation" such as rigging share prices.
The bourse plans to tighten supervisory rules this year, focusing on trading by executives of shares in their own firms as well as mergers and acquisitions that may involve insider trading.
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