Regulators in Ontario have permanently banned a British Columbia man who was convicted for carrying out a pump-and-dump scheme in Germany.
The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) issued a decision on Tuesday permanently banning Aly Babu Husein Mawji based on his 2012 conviction in Germany’s Stuttgart District Court for illegal market manipulation. He was sentenced to 38 months in prison on that conviction.
According to the decision, Mawji is a resident of B.C. and isn’t registered in Ontario. “However, the commission does not require a pre-existing connection to Ontario before exercising its jurisdiction,” the decision said.
OSC staff sought a protective order to “restrain future conduct.”
The regulatory hearing panel said that criminal convictions for securities-related offences meet the threshold for a protective order, “to provide both specific and general deterrence and to protect the investing public.”
It ordered that Mawji be permanently banned in Ontario.
Mawji didn’t participate in the OSC proceeding.
The panel’s decision noted Mawji’s conviction in Germany stemmed from a scheme carried out in 2006 that saw him acquire most of the free trading shares of a company and then pump up the value of those shares through a “network of stock exchange journalists” that pushed the price from €2.10 to €18.10, enabling him to cash out with a profit of €25.7 million, before the stock price crashed again.
The executive director of the B.C. Securities Commission has also applied for a protective order against Mawji. Its hearing is scheduled for Jan. 20, 2020.