Tjokrosaputro denies market cornering, accepts penalty

JAKARTA (JP): Benny Tjokrosaputro, who owns 51 percent of Multi Prakarsa Investama Securities, denied yesterday that he was involved in engineering the 207 percent rise in Bank Pikko shares last month.

But he said he would pay the penalty, a Rp 1 billion fine, as required by the Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam) on Wednesday.

"I did not take part in any cornering practice," he said.

Bapepam said Benny and Pendi Tjandra, Multi Prakarsa's president, engineered the 207 percent rise in the price of bank Pikko shares last month.

Bank Pikko's share price jumped 207 percent to Rp 4,000 in less than three hours on April 8 before being suspended.

Bapepam said the price surge was unrealistic because it was the result of cornering by Benny and Pendi

It said Benny and Pendi made big profits in the process.

In pushing up the price, the two men were helped by two securities houses, Multi Prakarsa Investama Securities and Putra Saridaya Persada, according to Bapepam which spent a month investigating the case.

Bapepam fined Benny Rp 1 billion and Pendi Rp 500 million for their part in the cornering. They must pay this to the state treasury within 14 days.

Benny said yesterday he accepted the penalty because he had used at least 13 nominees to order Pikko shares.

"I recognize that using other people's names is wrong," he said.

"I accept the penalty and I will hand over the money to the state treasury," he said.

He said he had not yet received payment from the share transactions.

"The profit I made is still in the form of shares," he said.

Benny said he now controlled around three million Pikko shares.

Bapepam said Benny and Pendi used 13 nominees to buy and sell the bank shares through eight different securities houses to corner the shares.

Bapepam also penalized several other investors, brokerage firms and the Jakarta Stock Exchange's management over the cornering. (09)