The Capital Market Commission (CMC) yesterday imposed the largest ever fine in the history of the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE).

The fine, 15,216,000 euros, was imposed on wholesale commerce firm Tassoglou-Delonghi, closed-end investment fund Active and five individuals for spreading false information and abuse of confidential information.

Ioannis Moustos and Spyros Tassoglou, chairman and managing director of Tassoglou-Delonghi respectively, were found to have spread, through official company announcements on a number of occasions in September 1999, misleading information about the supposed entry of long-term foreign investors into the company’s share capital. Such information, which was likely to affect the price and trading in the firm’s share, was misleading in that the prospective buyers were not institutional investors but mostly offshore companies and private individuals.

The two executives were also found to have abused this confidential information by buying a significant number of Tassoglou-Delonghi shares before its publication. Tassoglou, along with Dimitrios Ranios and Constantinos Avraamidis of Active investment fund (of which Ilias Bogdanos, who played a leading role in the scam, is a basic shareholder) abused the information by either buying a significant amount of shares before its publication or selling them to the public or institutional investors after publication. Separately, Bogdanos was also found to have bought a significant number of Active shares before the firm’s announcement of a share capital increase through capitalization of reserves in April 1999.

CMC also imposed fines of 100,000 euros on listed firm Lavipharm and of a total of 340,000 euros on six members of its board of directors for publishing misleading and incomplete information regarding the company’s consolidated financial statements.

Specifically, the statements for fiscal years 1999 and 2000 did not contain references to minority rights, resulting in the group’s consolidated pretax earnings being presented as 30.5 percent and 24.6 percent higher than real earnings for the two years respectively. CMC also referred the matter to the Board of Chartered Auditors for possible disciplinary action against its member who audited Lavipharm’s financial statements in question. Finally, it also referred the matter to the Development Ministry for an exhaustive probe into whether the firm observes the standing legislation in the compilation of its financial statements.