NEW YORK, CMC - The United States financial services watchdog agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says it has charged a Bahamas-based broker-dealer among others in what it describes as “an international market manipulation scheme”.
The SEC said charges have been laid against  Gibraltar Global Securities, a Bahamas-based broker-dealer; two San Diego, California attorneys and other participants in an international “pump-and-dump” scheme involving two publicly traded US companies, Pacific Blue Energy Corporation and Tradeshow Marketing Company Ltd.
The SEC’s complaint, filed in US federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that Gibraltar Global Securities provided “false affidavits and misleading statements” that allowed Canadian stock promoter Benjamin Kirk to “secretly sell shares of the companies he was promoting”.