SINGAPORE, April 22 — Singapore authorities raided a number of brokerages in a probe of possible breaches of the securities law, while the stock exchange reported several cases related to alleged insider trading and market manipulation as the city sought to protect its reputation as a financial centre.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore and the island-nation’s Commercial Affairs Department are investigating possible contraventions of the Securities and Futures Act and have obtained documents and items from several broking firms and trading representatives, the MAS said today.

Singapore has worked to restore confidence in the stock market after a penny-stock rout in 2013 that prompted the city’s largest securities-fraud probe, with Singapore Exchange Ltd chief executive officer Loh Boon Chye making it his top priority.

In that case, three companies suffered an unexplained free-fall that wiped out S$8 billion (RM23.159 billion) after the stocks had surged by as much as 1,000 per cent over nine months, before their shares plunged over three days in October 2013.

“It helps the image of Singapore as they clamp down on practices such as insider trading or market manipulation,” Bernard Aw, market strategist at IG Asia Pte, said by phone today. “To some extent this will help restore individual investor confidence on the market, if this relates to trading privileged information then it’s unfair to the individual investors.”

SGX referrals

Investigations are ongoing, the country’s central bank and market regulator said in a statement on the latest probe, without providing further details.

In a separate statement, the Singapore stock exchange, or SGX, said “in the January to March quarter, we referred nine cases to MAS of which three were related to insider trading and six to market manipulation.”

DBS Vickers Securities Singapore, Maybank Kim Eng Holdings, OCBC Securities and Phillip Securities were among at least four brokerages raided by the MAS and the CAD earlier in the week, the Singapore newspaper Business Times reported earlier today, citing unidentified market sources.

The newspaper said people were taken in for questioning, who were believed to be remisiers, referring to securities trading representatives who are usually paid on a commission basis.

The authorities also took the mobile phone and laptop of a remisier at OCBC Securities, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. No employee was affected and the company’s properties weren’t confiscated as part of the investigation, the person said, asking not to be identified because of the ongoing investigation.

Spokespeople for Maybank Kim Eng, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, Phillip Securities and DBS Vickers declined to comment on the MAS statement or the Business Times report.

The exact nature of the investigation isn’t known, the newspaper said. — Bloomberg