THE Government has had to ''de-freeze'' a parcel of World Trade Centre Group (WTC) shares just one week after ordering the halt on trading, following the discovery of an error by a nominee company.
The nominee company has said it was at fault because it had supplied the government-appointed inspector with an incorrect list of share certificate numbers, according to a government statement.
The mistake in quoting certain share certificate numbers had rendered void part of the share freeze, the Government said yesterday.
A spokesman said: ''The effect was that 44.85 million World Trade Centre Group shares not intended to be the target of the investigation were included in the restriction order dated July 8.
''In other words, the imposition of restrictions on these shares had no legal effect.'' A statement explaining the mistake will appear in three English and Chinese-language newspapers today.
The parcel of shares to be liquidated represents around a quarter of the 179 million shares that were frozen under the Securities (Disclosure of Interests) Ordinance last week.