Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The Polish SEC was yesterday supposed to punish the investment advisors who were accused of fraud. It did not.
After a year of investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission KPWiG was to decide yesterday whether to punish three investment advisors who allegedly broke the low while conducting stock operations. They faced losing the license. The decision was postponed, however.
“The case was discussed during the commission’s meeting. It needs additional explanations. Decisions will be made soon”, Lukasz Dajnowicz, KPWiG spokesman said.
The case has been described by “PB” since December 2004. “PB” was trying to estimate whether several people managing the country’s biggest investment and pension funds built an informal agreement in order to manipulate the stock and gaining control over listed companies, or not. After “PB” articles, KWPiG made a special group to investigate the matter. In effect, there were several suits concerning a suspected crime filed at the prosecutor’s office. Pension funds have been controlled by insurance authorities and three of them, including PZU, Commercial Union and AIG, had to pay PLN 1.8m (EUR 448,200).
KWPiG refused to publish the names of the accused advisors but these are the same people “PB” described several months ago. The group consists of Jakub Bentke, the former manager in PZU group and today the CEO of Skarbiec Investment Management, Andrzej Blachut, the former manager in AIR and Mariusz Adamiak, the head of asset management department in Pioneer Pekao TFI. KPWiG said before that the investigation should last about three months. In this case, the investigation has been going on for a year.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.249)