[Anchor]

A large group of journalists have been indicted en masse for making a massive amount of illegal profits by exploiting economic articles that draw the attention of stock investors. They are accused of making over 9.3 billion won in profits by buying related stocks in advance before their articles were published and selling them off after the stock prices rose.

Reporter Je Hui-won has the details.

[Reporter]

Articles on stocks of interest are reports explaining stocks that experienced significant price movements during trading hours and the background behind them.

Many individual investors use them as reference materials for investment decisions, but some economic newspaper reporters and accountants thoroughly exploited this point.

The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office has indicted eight individuals, including current and former economic newspaper reporters and the head of a quasi-investment advisory firm who is a former accountant, on charges including violations of the Capital Markets Act, and detained four of them.

According to the prosecutors, they selected stocks with low trading volume or high price volatility as stocks of interest, purchased the stocks, and transmitted related articles.

Afterward, when the stock prices rose, they pocketed profits by selling off all the shares to secure price margins.

The head of the quasi-investment advisory firm dragged economic newspaper reporters into the crime by offering to pay 300,000 won per article, and investigations showed that a total of five reporters participated in the crime.

The amounts pocketed by the reporters ranged from as little as 28 million won to as much as 160 million won.

Prosecutors estimate that from October 2020 to June of last year, over a period of about 4 years and 8 months, they wrote some 1,800 articles and acquired a total of 8.55 billion won in illicit profits.

In addition, another economic newspaper reporter was investigated for pocketing 740 million won in illegal profits alone by engaging in front-running using about 340 stock-of-the-interest articles written by themselves.

(Video Editing: Lee Sang-min)