Unusual trading in Thaicom shares has been detected among some stock accounts in terms of prices and volumes, Stock Exchange of Thailand president Charamporn Jotikasthira said yesterday.
"A decision on whether there has been any illegal trading [in Thaicom shares] will depend on further investigations by the SEC," he said.
Thaicom's share price has skyrocketed 30 per cent in recent days, with trading volume on Tuesday alone surging to Bt1.3 billion.
Following criticism that some politicians had benefited from the share-price rise, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Wednesday asked the securities authorities to launch an investigation.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij held his first formal discussion yesterday with Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Minister Chuti Krairiksh over the government's planned purchase of Thaicom.
Afterward, Korn said the government would make a decision on the purchase after four legal issues on Thaicom's concession were cleared up.
Three of the issues relate to the Supreme Court's February 26 ruling in the assets-seizure case against ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, involving his abuse of his power to benefit his family's telecom businesses. These included Shin Satellite (ShinSat), now called Thaicom.
The four "legal issues" are:
l Members of the Thaksin cabinet allowed Thaicom to change the terms of the concession contract to launch the iPSTAR broadband satellite as its main satellite rather than launch a back-up satellite for Thaicom 3 as stipulated in the contract.
l ShinSat's concession contract, amended in October 2004, reduced Shin Corp's minimum shareholding in ShinSat from 51 per cent to 40 per cent. This effectively reduced the investment burden of Shin while passing on the risks to smaller shareholders of ShinSat.
l ShinSat's violation of its concession when it used US$6.67 million - paid by insurance companies when the Thaicom 3 satellite was damaged while in orbit - to pay for satellite-rental charges instead of remitting the amount to the Transport Ministry, which was the satellite's owner under the concession contract at that time.
l An alleged breach of contract related to the April political turmoil.
Korn said the ICT Minister needed 21 days to clear up these issues.
On Monday, Chuti ordered state telecom-concession owners and ICT Ministry officials to wrap up within 21 days their investigations into which past amendments of telecom concessions by the state telecom agencies were unlawful, including those of Thaicom.
"The price for buying back Thaicom is not assessable, because some legal issues remain unclear," Korn said, adding that if the legal issues were clear, the government would be able to evaluate the real value of Thaicom.
The finance minister said he agreed with the prime minister on the purchase of Thaicom: if the price was too expensive, the government would not buy it back.