Court rejects plea against CSRC decision

The Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court on Friday rejected a plea filed by a former executive of Everbright Securities Co challenging an earlier decision of the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

In its ruling, the court said in its judgment that the appellant may have the decision reviewed in the Beijing High People's Court, if it is dissatisfied with the decision rendered.

Yang Jianbo, former general manager of the strategic transaction department of the brokerage firm, had sued the commission in April at the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court after the CSRC fined and banned him for life last year from the securities industry for insider trading.

According to Yang's indictment paper, at 11:05 am on last Aug 16, 2013, due to a flaw in trading software, Everbright Securities mistakenly placed 23.4 billion yuan ($3.84 billion) worth of purchase orders for 180 ETFs, of which 7.27 billion yuan were concluded.

Yang reported the incident to the CSRC Shanghai branch and the Shanghai Stock Exchange and later asked traders to short sell index futures and ETFs to hedge risks, according to instructions from the Everbright Securities, the indictment paper said.

The abnormal trading caused the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index to jump 5.96 percent in about three minutes, with a large number of purchase orders sent from the Everbright Securities' account.

On Nov 15, the CSRC announced formal penalties including a fine of 523 million yuan and life-time bans for four Everbright managers, including Yang, for insider trading.

The CSRC applauded the court ruling on Friday and said it will continue to fight against such behavior according to law.