Court-appointed administrators in Hong Kong have completed the process of returning $43.7 million to more than 1,500 investors affected by the insider dealing of Tiger Asia Management LLC and two of its senior officers, Bill Sung Kook Hwang and Raymond Park.

It was on 20 Dec 2013 that the Court of First Instance ordered Tiger Asia Management LLC (Tiger Asia) and the two executives to pay $45,266,610 to investors affected by their insider dealing involving two Hong Kong-listed banking stocks.

Later, in 2014, the Market Misconduct Tribunal determined that Tiger Asia and the two men engaged in market misconduct, ordering their exile from trading securities in Hong Kong for a period of four years (the maximum period is five years) without leave of the court. The MMT also issued cease and desist orders against both Tiger Asia and Hwang.

The disciplined parties admitted to breaking Hong Kong’s laws against insider-dealing when dealing in the shares of Bank of China Limited (BOC) and of China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB) in December 2008 and January 2009 and to manipulating the price of CCB shares in January 2009.

The payments were made under restoration orders made by the court after the parties made these admissions in December 2013 in proceedings initiated by the Securities and Futures Commission under s213 Securities and Futures Ordinance.

A total of $43,708,828 or 97 per cent out of the restoration fund $45,266,610 has been paid out to 1,591 local and overseas investors. The SFC and the administrators have taken all reasonable steps to contact the remaining 209 investors, but with no success. The remaining sum of $1,408,487 was returned to the Tiger Asia parties with the approval of the court.

The purpose of the restoration orders is to make insider-dealers financially accountable to those with whom they trade and to restore those counterparties to the financial positions they occupied before the transactions.