Based on an investigation, the Bank of Russia has uncovered market manipulation activities by a group of individuals and companies. The entities involved include LLC NKK-Paritet, LLC Invest-Profi, LLC InvestAlyans, V.A. Matytsyn, and O.R. Kasimov. These parties conducted transactions with derivatives and stock market instruments on the Moscow Exchange from January 14, 2020, to May 29, 2023.
The investigation revealed that these parties primarily chose low-liquidity financial instruments and placed matching orders to execute transactions with minimal time intervals between them. In most cases, the order parameters were identical in terms of price and amount. This approach minimized the possibility of orders being executed by any counterparty other than those involved in the scheme. The actions led to significant deviations in trading volumes.
The Bank of Russia noted that these actions appear to be collusive according to Clause 2 of Part 1 of Article 5 of Federal Law No. 224-FZ. As a result, they violated the prohibition on market manipulation stipulated by Part 2 of Article 6 of Federal Law No. 224-FZ.
Following this finding, the Bank has issued binding orders for these parties to cease such violations in the future. The Bank emphasized that market manipulation is prohibited and highlighted that transactions should only occur where direct orders are possible.
