The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has opened a criminal case against Russian investors who manipulated foreign stock prices by deceiving a trading robot. Their actions led to losses for the US-registered W-Empirical Holding in the amount of 154.6 million rubles, RBC has learned.
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The case file reports that the suspects engaged in fictitious transactions with each other involving low-liquid U.S. securities over several months in 2022.
At first, investors unreasonably lowered the price of the securities and then raised it. This forced the W-Empirical Holding algorithm to sell them securities at a lower price and buy them back at a higher price.
W-Empirical Holding acted as a market maker under an agreement with the broker Freedom Finance. The latter sold financial assets in the Russian Federation in the fall of 2022, after which the company was renamed Digital Broker.
Of the illegal proceeds of 154.6 million rubles received by the participants of the scheme, approximately 58.56 million rubles were withdrawn from the accounts and 96.05 million rubles were blocked by Freedom Finance due to the ongoing proceedings.
The case was initiated under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud committed by an organized group of persons), which provides for up to 10 years in prison. Two persons are identified as defendants: VI Kuleshov and SP
Author:
Karina Pardaeva
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
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