BROKER Wallace Yuen Moon-chung testified yesterday at the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) investigations that he had suspected Don Lau Yuen-leung was making insider deals.
Mr Yuen, director of sales of G K Goh Securities (HK), admitted he was 'a little bit' negligent when he accepted Don Lau's orders to trade in Public International Investment Ltd (PIIL) shares through an account which was not Don Lau's nor was it authorised for him to use.
Mr Yuen told the Insider Trading Tribunal that he did not check whether Don Lau was the authorised person to place orders for the actual account holder Lau Wai-man in the first place, because the buy and sell amounts were small.
'I felt that Don Lau should have the opportunity to give advice to the client,' said the broker.
He shrugged off the suggestion that he lied to the initial SFC interview in a bid to protect himself.
'In fact, there is no problem to me at all if I told the truth. Instead it was Don Lau [that I was worried about],' said Mr Yuen.
'Because Don Lau made a lot of profit through trading in the stock and it was he who called me to place the orders. Therefore, I suspected he would be doing insider dealing.' Mr Yuen reiterated that he did not want Don Lau, who was described as a 'reliable' person, to get involved in the matter at the time.