Portugal Proposes New Penalties For Stock Market Abuse

LISBON: The Portuguese government recently proposed a new law that will extend rules and increase penalties on insider trading and abuse of Portuguese stock markets. The government has proposed to widen the definition of insider trading to include company administrators and other people in contact with company accounts and privileged information. Previously, only financial intermediaries were subject to insider trading. This follows a call by Portugal's market regulator, CMVM, for tighter control over privileged information. The CMVM said it was investigating four market moves in 1998, and that a case of possible insider trading in 1999 was being analyzed.