Despite the recent spate of successful prosecutions for insider dealing by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, the regulator still feels it is missing certain powers from its enforcement arsenal. Key among these is the ability to directly bring civil proceedings for market misconduct issues, according to Mark Steward, the recently re-appointed executive director of enforcement at the SFC. In an exclusive interview with Complinet, he said the regulator was not able to bring civil cases before the city's Market Misconduct Tribunal, which is empowered to order the disgorgement of profits made from market misconduct.
"We've asked the government to correct this anomaly, that we can prosecute criminally but we can't take cases civilly to the MMT," Steward said. "The MMT is empowered to make orders for people to disgorge their profits — basically give up the money that they've made from market misconduct. We can't do that. We don't have access to the MMT. The primary civil tribunal
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