OREANDA-NEWS. The Bank of Russia has established the fact of market manipulation with units of closed-end real estate unit investment fund AVEKS-Real Estate (hereinafter, the Units) managed by the closed joint-stock company INTERCOMMERTS Asset Management during the trading on CJSC MICEX SE from 29 October 2014 to 1 April 2015 (hereinafter, the Period).

The inspection revealed that the trading activity in the Units market within the Period was fully maintained through pre-arranged transactions by a group of interconnected individuals: A. A. Gusev, D. I. Maryechkin, D. A. Mikhailov, I. I. Guseva, Yu. I. Boiko, S. B. Kharitonov and Ye. P.Kudryavtsev, and OJSC SMART Broker.

The said entities implemented a scheme of the repeated resale of a limited number of the Units among themselves which enabled them to give the impression of an active Units market and to set up conditions necessary to calculate the market price by CJSC MICEX SE.

During the Period the trade in Units deals was also conducted in the OTC market with ultimate buyers being the insurance markets agents and professional securities market participants who could use the market price calculated by CJSC MICEX SE to observe the ratios and other requirements set by Russian legislation. At the same time, the company connected with CJSC INTERCOMMERTS Asset Management turned out to be the single owner of the Units when the fund was formed.

The interrelations revealed between market participants and CJSC INTERCOMMERTS Asset Management, as well as the distribution of the Units among entities supervised by the Bank of Russia made it clear that one of the aims of such manipulation was to mislead both investors and the Bank of Russia on the Units price and liquidity and on the real economic status of the said non-credit financial institutions.

Deals with the Units which did not result in substantial deviations in parameters of the Units trading during the Period are not qualified as market manipulation pursuant to Part 1 of Article 5 of the Federal Law, however, they are considered an integral part of the deals made by the group of interconnected entities in the process of consistent artificial building of the Units market.

The Bank of Russia took action in relation to the entities involved in the Units market manipulation which is aimed at non-admission of similar violations in future.