A criminal case on market manipulation (Part 2, Article 185.3 of the Russian Criminal Code) has been opened in Moscow against the authors of the Telegram channels "RynkiDengiVlast|RDV," "Wolf of the Moscow Exchange," and "RCB Signals." The FSB, the Investigative Committee, and the Interior Ministry reported this.
Three defendants in the case were detained, and a pretrial measure in the form of custody has already been imposed on them, Interior Ministry spokesperson Irina Volk said.
According to investigators, the suspects are traders from PFL Advisors. They allegedly posted calls in Telegram channels to buy or sell assets, which affected their prices.
Investigators believe that as a result, the defendants carried out more than 55,000 illegal but profitable trades for themselves on the Moscow Exchange involving shares and depositary receipts of 19 major Russian companies.
"These actions led to significant deviations in the prices of financial instruments and allowed members of the organized group to extract excess income on an especially large scale," Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said.
In early April, Kirill Pronin, director of the Central Bank's financial market infrastructure department, said that the regulator was checking several bloggers for possible manipulation of the securities market. He described some of these cases as "egregious."
According to Pronin, the authors of some Telegram channels first buy assets and then publish information in their Telegram channels about an imminent rise in their price. Subscribers then begin buying those securities, causing their value to increase. The bloggers then sell their assets at an inflated price.