Thailand’s SEC Fines Bitkub Subsidiary $234K for Insider Trading, Bans Executive

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has slapped an 8.53 million baht (around $234,000) monetary penalty on Bitkub Blockchain Technology Co (BBT), a part of the Bitkub group, for the involvement of one of its executives in insider trading.

According to a Bangkok Post report, the securities market regulator publicly announced its action against the company on Tuesday evening.

Insider Trading

The penalty came as Samret Wajanasathian, the Chief Technology Officer of BBT, which is the sister company of Thailand’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, bought a total of 61,107.66 Bitkub coins (KUB), the crypto exchange’s native token, worth 1.99 million baht between September 4 and November 2 last year.

He bought the coins when Bitkub Capital Group Holding was in talks with the country’s oldest lender, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) for a possible acquisition of majority stakes. SCB agreed to buy 51 percent of the crypto exchange operator for 17.85 billion baht (around $500 million). However, that deal was scrapped recently by the bank.

Wajanasathian started acquiring the exchange tokens after the talks of the acquisition started and stopped with the public announcement of the acquisition, which drove the price of KUB from 49.53 baht to 99.99 baht.

The SEC highlighted that Wajanasathian, being an executive of a Bitkub group, had insider knowledge of the acquisition deal and bought those coins in order to profit.

Apart from imposing fines on the company, the Thai regulator banned Wajanasathian for 12 months from being an executive of any cryptocurrency company.

Moreover, Thailand’s crypto exchanges are facing the impact of a slowdown in the cryptocurrency market. A recent local regulatory report revealed that the number of Thai cryptocurrency accounts dropped by 67 percent since the beginning of 2022.