It has been confirmed that the Joint Response Team to Eradicate Stock Price Manipulation conducted a search and seizure at the headquarters of The Korea Economic Daily on the 5th.

According to financial authorities, the team carried out the search and seizure at The Korea Economic Daily headquarters in Jung-gu, Seoul, starting this morning.

It is reported that the team identified suspicions that some reporters at The Korea Economic Daily were involved in front-running and launched a compulsory investigation.

Front-running refers to buying shares after obtaining in advance information that will affect stock prices, then publishing a favorable article and selling when the price rises to realize a price gain. The Capital Markets Act regards this as an unfair act and strictly prohibits it.

Since last year, the financial authorities have continued an investigation into such suspected unfair trading by employees of certain economic newspapers.

In November last year, the special judicial police for capital markets at the Financial Supervisory Service arrested and referred to prosecutors two people, including a former reporter identified as A and a full-time investor formerly from a securities firm, on charges of having obtained illicit profits of more than 10 billion won by using front-running.