The chief technology officer (CTO) of Bitkub, Thailand's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said he will appeal against the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) 8.53-million-baht fine for insider trading, and will remain in the position until the legal process is clarified.
The securities regulator said on Wednesday it issued an insider trading case against Samret Wajanasathian and barred him from serving as CTO of Bitkub Blockchain Technology (BBT) for 12 months.
The charge is related to the failed acquisition offer for Bitkub Online made by Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), the country's oldest lender.
According to the SEC statement, Mr Samret had progressively bought 61,107.66 Bitkub coin (KUB) for 1.99 million baht between Sept 4 and Nov 2, 2021.
The deal was made while BBT's parent firm, Bitkub Capital Holding, was in talks with SCB to sell a 51% stake in its digital asset exchange, Bitkub Online.
Mr Samret took to Facebook late Wednesday to clarify the SEC charge, claiming he had a narrow window to purchase KUB coin between product launches for BBT.
"During the period the SEC accuses me of insider trading, I was an executive of BBT, which is a different company from the exchange, so I daresay that I had no knowledge whatsoever of the SCB deal," Mr Samret wrote.
"If my objective was short-term speculation, I would have sold all my KUB coins to gain profit already, but the fact remains that I haven't sold KUB coins to gain profit.
"I already informed the SEC of this, but they still punished me without clear evidence. I would like to insist that I will defend the issue."
BBT said Mr Samret would remain at his post until the law is enforced. BBT said the company is not involved, nor is it affected by the issue and is operating as usual.
"We still intend to develop Bitkub Chain to be the digital infrastructure for mass adoption in Thailand, as described in the Bitkub Chain White Paper. We intend to democratise opportunities for everyone to have real ownership and rights to own digital assets, showing the real economic value via real-life and impactful use cases for businesses," it said in a statement.
SCB and Bitkub announced last week the 17.85-billion-baht acquisition deal was called off, citing regulatory issues faced by Bitkub in recent months.
Members of the committee in charge of selecting which tokens are traded on Bitkub Online were fined in May for violating the SEC's criteria on digital asset listings.
