Chairman of Vietnam’s FLC Group fined $66,000 for illegal sale of nearly 75 million shares
Tuesday, January 18, 2022, 16:54 GMT+7
Chairman of Vietnamese FLC Group Trinh Van Quyet has been fined VND1.5 billion (US$65,900) and suspended from securities trading for five months for failing to report the sale of almost 75 million FLC shares.
The State Securities Commission of Vietnam (SSC) announced on Tuesday morning it had imposed the fine and the trading suspension on Quyet for his violation.
The suspension starts from Tuesday.
The FLC chairman previously sold 74.8 million FLC shares on January 10 without announcing his planned transactions in advance as promulgated by the law.
The Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HoSE) announced on the next day the cancelation of the transactions of these shares.
FLC Group confirmed that Quyet had paid the fine upon receiving the decision and he is willing to comply with other measures imposed by the SSC.
As Quyet’s transactions have been terminated, the ownership structure at the enterprise will not see major changes.
Prior to the unannounced sale, Quyet was the largest shareholder at FLC, owning 215.4 million shares, equivalent to a 30.34 percent stake in the group.
His holding at FLC remains the same after the transactions of the 74.8 million shares were canceled.
However, the incident did dampen investors’ confidence in the firm.
As investors rushed to sell FLC shares, they dropped from VND24,100 ($1) per share on the morning of January 10 to VND21,150 ($0.9) in afternoon trade and to VND19,100 ($0.84) on January 11.
The SSC said it is still working with relevant authorities to further deal with this case.
To prevent similar cases from happening in the future, the commission said it will tighten the supervision of transactions to promptly detect any abnormal activities that could manipulate securities prices.
In late 2017, the SSC penalized Quyet for failure to report the sale of 57 million shares of FLC.
The chairman could have pocketed at least VND400 billion ($17.6 million) compared to his fine of VND65 million ($2,860) then.
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