The SFC has banned a former licensee from acting as a responsible officer (RO) for life and prohibited him from being licensed for three years. The licensee provided false evidence of his academic qualifications in support of his licence applications. When an individual applies for an SFC licence, either an RO or a director of the licensed corporation to which the person will be attached needs to make a declaration confirming that he has reviewed the academic qualifications.

The SFC has banned other ROs recently, in connection with various regulatory breaches and misconduct. In the past six months, the SFC has taken disciplinary action on more than five occasions with penalties ranging from a nine-month licence suspension to a ten-year prohibition on re-entering the industry. These cases highlight the responsibility of ROs for failures of internal controls or inadequate supervision although the inappropriate activities may have been conducted by other staff. The regulatory failures in these recent cases included:

• inadequate supervision of operations and compliance
  
• failure to put in place sufficient internal control systems and policies
  
• carrying on unlicensed activities
  
• front-running
  
• failure to detect suspicious instructions to match orders
  
• breaches of Hong Kong GEM listing rules