[속보] Financial Services Commission seizes and searches stock cafe operators and YouTubers

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The Financial Services Commission’s capital market investigation team recently captured and confiscated the charges of unfair trade by Naver stock cafe operators and famous stock YouTubers.

The exchange is monitoring a total of 388 stocks by 10 themes such as Corona 19, virtual currency, and Untact.

The Financial Services Commission, the Financial Supervisory Service, the Exchange, and the Prosecutors’ Office decided to strengthen cooperation by holding a monthly meeting of unfair trade investigation hearing agencies, and to increase transparency in the capital market by establishing a’Unfair Trade Trend Monitoring Group’. The Financial Services Commission’s capital market investigation team announced on the 4th that it had conducted two seizure searches with a court warrant in order to actively respond to the unfair trading practices of stocks using internet cafes and video platforms on the 2nd and 3rd.

The Financial Services Commission caught the suspicion of pre-sale by a Naver stock cafe operator with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Advance trading is a fraudulent transaction method in which stocks purchased in advance are recommended to be bought through internet cafes and SNS, and then sold at high prices to obtain profits.

In addition, the Financial Services Commission is looking into the suspicion of manipulating the preferred stock market price of a famous stock YouTuber with an investment of 30 billion won. YouTubers are suspected to have gained trading profits by buying large quantities of preferred stocks, which have fewer circulating stocks on the market, raising the stock price with high-priced purchase orders, and disposing of them.

The Financial Services Commission emphasized, “We will continue to use the financial commission’s seizure and search authority appropriately in the future to effectively respond to increasingly sophisticated and intelligent financial crimes and to secure rapid evidence.”

The Financial Services Commission held the first unfair trade investigation hearing agency meeting with the Financial Supervisory Service, the Korea Exchange, and the prosecution. At this meeting, the financial authorities decided to establish a cooperation system with related organizations, as Donghak Ant’s participation in the capital market increased rapidly, and as cases of abuse of SNS and video platforms as unfair trade channels became frequent. The number of active stock trading accounts increased from 29.4 million at the end of 2019 to 36.2 million in January of this year. During the same period, the average daily trading value of individuals in the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets surged from 6.110 trillion won to 33.6 trillion won. At the same time, there are increasing signs of abnormal trading in the stock market. In January of this year, the number of stocks that received market warning measures due to a surge in stock prices or concentration of small-scale account transactions was 347, up 29% from the previous month. The Financial Services Commission explained that market warning measures for EVs and politicians related to EVs in January of this year increased a lot, mainly from Corona 19 and cryptocurrency-related stocks in December last year. Accordingly, the exchange decided to promptly initiate a hearing after designating a total of 388 stocks in 10 fields, including Corona 19, virtual currency, and Untact, as theme stocks and monitoring them intensively and confirming signs of unfair trade.

The financial authorities have been investigating four securities companies since last month for alleged unborrowed short selling in the form of illegal short selling without holding stocks. The financial authorities plan to take strict measures by completing an investigation into illegal short selling in the first quarter of this year.

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