Investigators say $1.5m paid to bankers, analysts to manipulate price of stock
The Independent Commission Against Corruption has arrested nine people, including the chairman of listed company Semtech International Holdings, over alleged payments of at least $1.5 million to bankers and analysts to manipulate Semtech's share price.
As well as chairman Derek Wong Chong-kwong, the arrests included a senior executive and a secretary of the cigarette lighter maker, whose share price has more than doubled in six months, sources close to the ICAC said.
The shares were suspended from trading at the company's request yesterday. They last traded at $1.59.
Mr Wong is a member of a wealthy Thai-Chinese family and a cousin of Wong Chong-shan, owner of Seiko - the most successful professional soccer team in Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s before it was dissolved in the late 1980s.
In an action code-named 'Poster Star' that began on Friday, the ICAC also arrested a senior director of a bank, a managing director of a brokerage firm, two research analysts, a senior sales manager of a securities company and an alleged middleman for the deals.
The sources said Derek Wong was alleged to have paid an unknown amount of money to two research analysts to write favourable reports ahead of the company's two share placements in May and early this month.
