Under section 188 of the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007 (CMSA), an insider trading offence is punishable with an imprisonment term of not exceeding 10 years and a fine of not less than RM1 million.

Tan Bee Hong was convicted of insider trading as she was found to have disposed 350,000 APLI shares while in possession of material non-public information. Her sister Tan Bee Geok, who was an executive director of APLI in charge of finance then, was convicted of communicating the said non-public information to her between 23 October 2007 and 31 October 2007.

Tan Bee Geok had tipped her sister on the audit adjustments proposed by APLI’s auditors, which resulted in APLI reporting a higher loss for the financial year ended 30 June 2007 compared to the previously reported unaudited Q4 results for the same financial year. The audit adjustments led to APLI being classified as a PN 17 company. APLI made announcements to Bursa Malaysia about the audit adjustments and its classification as a PN 17 company on 31 October 2007.

The sisters were tried together in a full trial, where 13 witnesses testified for the prosecution and four witnesses for the defence.

In another case, the High Court today dismissed an application by Dato’ Seri Stanley Thai Kim Sim to be reappointed as a director of Supermax Corporation Berhad. The application was sought by Thai after he was disqualified as a director of Supermax following his conviction of an insider trading offence in November 2017.