Former OCBC trading rep, ex-GM of Sasseur Reit affiliate found guilty of trading offences
One is convicted of abetting false trading and the other, of engaging in insider trading
TWO individuals have been convicted under the Securities and Futures Act – one of them for false trading, and the other for insider trading, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Wednesday (May 20).
Former OCBC Securities trading representative Tan Chun Yong was handed a 10-week-long imprisonment term on May 19 for abetting false trading and for unauthorised trading in the shares of KTL Global.
MAS said that Tan, then a trading representative with OCBC Securities, intentionally aided another individual, Tang Boon Hai, to create a false appearance of active trading in KTL’s shares.
Tan enabled Tang to place orders for KTL shares in six trading accounts between November 2014 and September 2015, even though Tang was not authorised by the brokerage firm to operate these accounts.
What Tan did led the brokerage firm to believe that the orders and trades were made by the actual holders of those accounts, when in fact the orders and trades were made by Tang.
Following a 28-day trial, he was found guilty on one charge of intentionally aiding false trading, and six charges relating to deceptive trading practices.
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He has appealed against his conviction and sentence.
Tang, convicted in April 2023 for false trading, unauthorised trading and dishonestly receiving stolen property, was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment.
In January 2024, Tan Kheng Yeow, the former CEO of KTL, was found guilty of conspiring with Tang to create a false appearance of active trading in the company’s shares.
They had set out to give the impression that people were actively buying the shares with the aim of raising the company’s share price. KTL, then a mainboard-listed company, had been unable to meet the new minimum trading price requirement announced by the Singapore Exchange in 2014.
Insider trading
The second case involved of Xie Jianfeng, at the time a general manager in the finance department of an entity linked to the manager of Sasseur Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit).
In February 2021, he purchased units of the Reit while in possession of material non-public information related to the trust’s FY2020 financial results.
After the Reit announced its results on Feb 26, 2021, he sold the units for a profit of about S$224,000.
Xie also conducted trades in Sasseur Reit units on behalf of former colleagues between March 2020 and January 2021, without properly disclosing the beneficial ownership of the trades to CGS-CIMB Securities, MAS said.
He pleaded guilty to one charge of insider trading; another insider trading charge and a charge related to the unauthorised trades were taken into consideration during sentencing.
Xie was handed a fine of S$200,000.
MAS noted that he had voluntarily contributed about S$135,000 to charity, and paid S$89,000 to the state as disgorgement of his share of profits from the offences.
The cases were jointly investigated by MAS and the Commercial Affairs Department, following referrals from the Singapore Exchange and Singapore Exchange Regulation.
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