Suruhanjaya Sekuriti Malaysia

On the court record

The capital-market regulator, litigating insider-trading enforcement under the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007, constitutional challenges to its powers, and contempt and natural-justice questions arising from its regulatory action.

Suruhanjaya Sekuriti Malaysia (the Securities Commission) is the statutory regulator that supervises and develops the Malaysian capital market, and it appears in the corpus in enforcement and regulatory litigation — insider-trading prosecution, judicial review of its disciplinary action, and contempt proceedings — in roles ranging from plaintiff to respondent to intervener and amicus curiae.

Securities enforcement is central. In a substantial matter the Commission pursued insider trading under the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007, the case turning on a breach of section 188(2)(a) through the joint acquisition of shares while in possession of inside information, proved by circumstantial evidence — the timing of trades, a money trail, and telephone communications coinciding with the trading — and engaging the liability of a corporate insider. The constitutionality of the same provision was separately attacked: a convicted person, with an appeal pending, filed an originating summons to declare section 188(2)(a) unconstitutional as inconsistent with Articles 5(1) and 8(1) of the Federal Constitution, which was met by a striking-out under Order 18 rule 19(1)(d).

The Commission also litigated the boundaries of its regulatory role and the courts' processes. In one matter it sought leave to commence committal proceedings for contempt, raising whether a prima facie case of contempt had been established, whether a penal notice was a mandatory prerequisite, whether interference with a permissive court order amounted to contempt, and how a regulator's advice on compliance was to be treated. It was also involved in the judicial review of action taken under section 354 of the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007 — where a person found in breach and punished raised breach of natural justice and error in evaluating evidence — and appeared as amicus curiae and statutory body in a damages dispute over the sale of shares and control of a public-listed company, invoking section 15 of the Securities Commission Act. The Commission's footprint maps the full reach of a market regulator, from criminal enforcement to the defence of its own procedures.