No manipulation in BII's share trade: Bapepam
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
While some "procedural violations" occurred in the trading of Bank International Indonesia's (BII) shares last year, none could be categorized as illegal manipulation, the country's share market watchdog said.
The Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam) said it had found no proof that traders of BII shares had deliberately driven up the bank's share price for personal gain from October to December last year.
"We did not find enough evidence, as required by existing regulations, to indicate manipulation in the trade of BII's shares in that period," Robinson Simbolon, head of Bapepam's legal division, said on Saturday as reported by detik.com.
However, despite the absence of manipulation, Robinson said Bapepam imposed Rp 1 billion fine to Transpacific Securindo, which was actively involved in BII shares trading during the three-month period, for violating existing regulations.
The company was the arranger and executor from Genius Pacific Ltd. and Coral Investment Ltd., companies based in Singapore and Hong Kong respectively.
"The company's action had the potential to disrupt the investment climate in capital markets," Robinson said.
He did not specify what regulations the company had broken.
Robinson was announcing the results of an investigation into the trading, which was started in January this year.
The allegations centered on suspicions certain parties had intentionally put upward pressure on the bank's share price, ahead of plans by the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) to sell a significant stake in BII.
IBRA, which controls the bank, launched a block sale of a 17.43 percent stake on Dec. 16 with the price pegged at Rp 90 a share, based on its performance in the past months.
Previously, the bank's share price was far above the IBRA's set price. In October, it reached Rp 145 a share before hovering around Rp 95 a share in the last days prior to the sale.
As allegations of illegal practices mounted, Bapepam and the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) launched an investigation into the affair, questioning dozens of brokerage and securities firms. None of these firms have been named.
IBRA collected around Rp 750 billion in proceeds from the sale.
The block sale represented the second round of sales for a stake in the bank -- which is among the country's top 10 banks with assets of more than Rp 36 trillion (US$4.1 billion) and 1.1 million customers. It followed the sale of a 51 percent stake in the bank to a consortium led by South Korea's Kookmin Bank and Singapore's Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. in October.