The U.S. financial regulator SEC has frozen the assets of Russia's brokerage BroCo. The U.S. financial authorities accuse the company specializing in operations on the unregulated market Forex of illegal activities in the stock market – by gaining access to brokerage customers' accounts and using this information for manipulations. The company itself claims that the transactions in stocks were legitimate, but too successful, and that attracted the attention of SEC.

On March 16 the Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC) reported on its website that by the decision of the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York accounts of the brokerage company BroCo Investments and of its President Valery Maltsev had been frozen. The accounts contained assets valued at more than $ 500 thousand

The U.S. regulator believes that the brokerage company and its leader used the information about the login and password for online accounts of their clients on illegal basis. They made transactions of shares manipulating quotes from those accounts, and did not inform the clients about it. SEC found at least 38 cases of detention of such transactions from August to December 2009. According to SEC, the company operated as follows: it acquired assets through its account, after a few minutes it requested for purchasing the same securities at inflated prices from the client’s account without getting his consent. As a result, low liquidity securities were purchased at prices substantially above market, which influenced the quotes and trading volumes. The company also benefited from closing short positions opened by the requests for sale at prices below the market; all of those were made on behalf of clients. As a result, the brokerage company received more than $ 255.5 thousand profit. The financial regulator asked the court to recognize the profits illegal.

Group BroSo appeared in April 2008. Nowadays it includes LLC "Broko Invest” (Russia's investment company with the Federal Financial Markets Service licenses for brokerage, dealing activities, conducting management of securities, as well as the license of a broker committing commodity futures and options transactions), BroCo Investments (provides services in the Forex market , stock markets and carries out futures trading), as well as analytical radio BrocoPulse. In 2008, the company ForexExpo conferred it the title of best online broker in Russia.

Mr. Maltsev says that his company has no relation to transactions that have raised suspicions of the SEC. “Customers commit operations on sub-accounts by themselves, not the company," he said. According to him, SEC might have not liked the fact that "among those who work with platform Laser Trade, there are very successful traders, showing a very high yield”. "This could be a reason for the attention of the regulator", the company believes. Apart from BroCo, the Russian companies BKS and CYgroup also are operating on the basis of Laser Trade platform.