Over 10,000 illicit trades in OGK-2 shares trigger regulatory bans
The Bank of Russia has established market manipulation by K.V. Mikhailov and A.I. Mikhailova in PJSC OGK-2 shares on the Moscow Exchange. The regulator ordered market participants to suspend transactions across the individuals' trading accounts following more than 10,000 manipulative trades.
More than 10,000 collusive transactions
During 2025, K.V. Mikhailov and A.I. Mikhailova repeatedly deployed pump-and-dump strategies alongside reverse dump-and-pump schemes to manipulate prices of PJSC OGK-2 shares.
The individuals submitted aggressive bids to artificially inflate share prices before offloading their holdings at the peak.
In reverse operations, they aggressively dumped shares to depress quotations and repurchased them at lowered price levels.
These coordinated cycles were executed multiple times within single trading sessions, generating more than 10,000 transactions on the Moscow Exchange.
The operations produced sharp volatility spikes, created abnormal price and volume deviations through collusive trading between brokerage accounts, and increased financial risks for legitimate participants.
Enforcement and account suspensions
The Bank of Russia qualified the conduct as market manipulation under Clauses 2 and 5 of Part 1 of Article 5 of federal law.
The central bank held both individuals liable and issued binding cease-and-desist orders against future violations.
Furthermore, the regulator directed trading venues and professional market participants to suspend transactions across the perpetrators' accounts.
The supervisory authority warned market participants against participating in coordinated schemes designed to distort fair pricing during anonymous order matching on organized exchanges.
Surveillance lag undermines enforcement impact
The enforcement action demonstrates effective forensic detection of manipulative trading patterns.
However, executing over 10,000 illicit trades before intervention reveals persistent latency in domestic exchange surveillance.
Real-time pre-trade filtering remains essential to protect liquidity in less active single stocks.
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