Four people fined €6.47m for market manipulation in 2007

Cyprus securities and exchange commission (Cysec) fined four people a total of €6.47m on Wednesday for violating the law on market manipulation in 2007.

Ioannis Vardinogiannis bore the brunt of the fine and is now legally required to pay €6.4m for obtaining almost 20 million shares from Sea Star Capital Plc (formerly Megabet) using Amalia Vardinogianni.

Though the nature of their relation is not specified, the decision outlined that Ioannis was aware of confidential information relating to the company over how they were to be changing their activities to gear it to the shipping sector.

He was also involved in the company’s share capital.

Consequently, with this information at hand, Amalia Vadinogianni purchased 19,358,487 in company shares at a price of €0.09 each, with a total sum of €1.7m on March 29 in 2007.

On June 29 in the same year, she sold all the shares at €0.42 per share on the Cyprus stock exchange, making €8.1m.

The total profit was €6.4m.

Though the shares were purchased and sold by Amalia, Cysec ruled the purchase was really for Ioannis but had been done in a disguised way.

As part of the investigation, she was found to have lied to Cysec employees looking into the wrongdoings and was consequently fined €50,000.

Christodoulos Ellinas and Filippos Larkos were fined €20,000 each for also providing misleading and false information to Cysec as part of its investigation.

 

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