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Nigeria's SEC Takes 260 to Court over Market Abuse
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28.07.10
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| Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Tuesday it was taking 260 entities and individuals to a special tribunal over alleged market abuse committed between 2006 and 2008.
"The SEC in its avowed commitment to restore investor confidence, enhance market integrity and protect everyday investors, is taking 260 entities and individuals to the Investments and Securities Tribunal," it said in a statement.
"These entities and individuals, including banks and other capital markets operators, are alleged to have been involved in price fixing, share price manipulation, fraud and insider trading," the statement said.
It did not name any of those it planned to bring before the tribunal but said it was seeking injunctions, monetary penalties and the disgorgement of profits gained through market abuse.
Nigeria has been trying to restore confidence in its capital markets since last year's $4 billion bailout of nine banks, whose reckless lending -- much of it to stock market speculators -- was deemed by central bank auditors to have left them so weakly capitalised that they posed a systemic risk.
Executives from the banks were charged in the wake of the bailout with offences ranging from conspiring with stockbrokers to manipulate their own share prices, to granting credit facilities worth billions of naira without adequate security.
The SEC has the power to identify and ban capital markets operators through the Investments and Securities Tribunal.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the rescued banks, for which the Central Bank is trying to find new investors, were among those which would face the tribunal.
Source: Reuters |
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