The Capital Market Authority (CMA) has appealed to traders who have suffered losses due to stock market irregularities to provide documentation of financial damage to the Resolution of Securities Disputes Committee to pave the way for compensation. An official from the CMA, the Saudi bourse regulator, said that fines of traders in breach of regulations “belonged to shareholders affected during the period of irregular activity”. “Anyone proven to have been affected will be compensated,” the official said. “This includes anyone affected by irregularities over which charges have been brought and whose names have been announced by the CMA.” On Jan. 30 the CMA announced that it had ordered six investors to pay a total SR278.1 million ($74.16 million) for trading violations, the latest in a line of sizeable fines for irregularities. A CMA appeals panel issued the final ruling in which the six men were found guilty of breaching trading regulations in transactions with shares in Tihama Advertising and Public Relations Co in 2006. One of the six was fined SR200,000 and ordered to return SR142.8 million, the profits CMA said were made in through the transactions. The panel also barred four of the six investors from trading in shares of listed firms or working for listed companies for three years. By the end of 2009, the Securities Disputes Committee had issued 676 rulings since its inception in 2005, 161 of which were made final after the passing of the period for appeal. 420 rulings were appealed during the same period and 191 final decisions were issued on those appeals, involving compensation of over SR30 million.
