Regulatory Actions and Updates from Around the Globe

Enforcement Highlights – April 2021

United States: 

• The SEC awarded over USD $3 million to two whistleblowers who brought to light key issues and violations to help improve SEC’s ongoing compliance efforts.

• SEC filed charges against 8 companies for failing to disclose complete reporting information on required Form 12b-25 filings.

• The SEC charged fund manager and former race car team owner Andrew T. Franzone with multimillion-dollar investment fraud and misappropriation scheme.

• The SEC filed charges against Spot Tech House Ltd., a binary options trading platform, and two of its top executives with defrauding investors out of more than USD $100 million through unregistered online sales.

• The SEC charged seven individuals with defrauding investors out of more than USD $16 million through an oil-and-gas market manipulation scheme.

United Kingdom:

• The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) commenced criminal proceedings against 2 individuals for conducting unauthorized regulated business activities in the UK.

• The FCA banned and fined UK financial adviser Simon Varley £68,300 for providing unqualified, dishonest financial advice to retail customers.

Hong Kong:

• The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) fined Optimas Capital Limited $1.05 million over multiple failures with their short position reporting processes.

• The Market Misconduct Tribunal (MMT) sanctioned two former executives of Asia Telemedia Limited (ATML), now known as Yunfeng Financial Group Limited, for insider dealing.

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