by Khushwant Singh
WITHIN a six-month period in 2004, Mr Franco Giuseppe, 45,
bought more than 1.35 million shares of Permasteelisa Pacific
Holdings (PPH). He was the firm's chief financial officer (CFO)
then and on Wednesday, the Italian national and Singapore permanent
resident was fined $40,000 each on three counts of insider trading
and fined an additional $80,000 each on two counts of market
rigging. A total of 15 similar charges were taken into
consideration by District Judge Kessler Soh when passing sentence.
Mr Giuseppe had pleaded guilty in February earlier this year.
Defence counsel Shashi Nathan of Inca Law pointed out that his
client did not make a cent from the transactions. Mr Giuseppe
merely did as he was told by his bosses in Italy but the lawyer did
admit that this was no excuse as the former CFO should have known
better.
The court had heard from the prosecutor that in early 2004, PPH
planned to acquire the Asian division of the Josef Gartner (JG)
construction business for $44 million. This purchase was to be
funded by the issuance of 110 million new PPH shares at the issue
price of 40 cents each.
Both PPH and JG were subsidiaries of the Permasteelisa S.P.A.
(PSPA) group. To prevent the shares dipping below 40 cents, Mr Enzo
Pavan, PPH's chief executive, and Mr Giampiero Alessandrini, JG's
general manager, are said to have instructed Mr Giuseppe to buy the
shares on 40 separate occasions between March and August 2004.
The court also heard that while the two alleged accomplices had
refused to come here to assist in the investigations, Mr Giuseppe
had cooperated fully with the Commercial Affairs Department. He had
also offered to pay prosecution's costs of $31,200 and this gesture
of contrition had been accepted by the prosecution.