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HONG KONG - HONG KONG has won its first criminal conviction for insider trading after a finance manager pleaded guilty to using insider information to dump shares in her company, the local securities watchdog said.
Vicky Hung Lai Mei received a suspended six-month sentence and a HK$200,000 (S$34,616) fine after pleading guilty on Thursday to four counts of insider trading, the Securities and Futures Commission said in a statement.
The commission says Hung avoided a HK$63,333 loss by selling her 180,000 shares in Hong Kong-listed Sino Golf Holdings Ltd. She worked for a unit of the company.
It marks the first time Hong Kong regulators have secured a criminal conviction under an insider trading statute enacted in 2003. Two other criminal prosecutions were pending, and regulators are pursuing four other cases in civil proceedings.
'Insider dealing is a dishonest act that corrodes market confidence if left unchecked,' said Mr Mark Steward, the securities commission's executive director of enforcement.
Regulators say Hung learned in October 2004 that a major debtor of Sino Golf had declared bankruptcy in the US.
Although the bankruptcy was publicly known, Sino Golf's connection with the debtor wasn't.
Two months later, Hung sold her shares.
In April 2005, Sino Golf's stock tumbled after it announced that its net profits for the previous year declined more than 35 per cent in part because of the bad debt. -- AFP
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