TJ Group trial: small investors also want satisfaction

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A group of stock investors is joining calls for compensation for losses incurred in the share offering of the IT services company TJ Group in the spring of 2000.
      The investors agree with State Prosecutor Ritva Sahavirta, who is accusing the company of selling shares worth four euros apiece for EUR 17.60 based on false and misleading information.
      The share issue yielded the company EUR 57 million; the main owners got EUR 181 million from the approximately 8,000 investors who bought shares at that time.
     
Lawyer Urpo Väänänen will not say how many plaintiffs he represents, but he says that they invested "larger or smaller sums" of money in the company.
      The investors need to push their complaint separately from the ongoing criminal trial, because they have not been approved as injured parties in the criminal case - in spite of the fact that the State Prosecutor is demanding that the defendants pay compensation of EUR 151 million, which originally came from the investors.
     
The legal position of the investors in the TJ Group case is based on a precedent set by the Supreme Administrative Court concerning a share issue of the former Kansallis Bank a few years back.
      The court ruled that the small investors could not demand monetary damages in connection with a criminal trial, because they did not have standing as injured parties in a crime. As the court sees it, the purpose of stock exchange legislation is to protect the integrity of the securities market, and therefore, the possible EUR 151 million in ill-gotten gains would go to the state, if the defendants are found guilty.
      Urpo Väänänen says that this is not necessarily a bad thing, because the state has already seized the defendants' money, preventing them from disposing of their assets, which could be a danger in a purely civil process.
      He says that the investors will have to push their civil case, after which they can discuss the possibility of getting at the money that is seized by the state.
      He also notes that the plaintiffs would still have the right to sue TJ Group, even if the company is acquitted in the criminal trial.
     
Also facing possible civil charges are Evli Bank, which was the main organiser of the share offer, as well as the legal advisers Roschier-Holmberg & Waselius and auditors Ernst & Young.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Prosecutors seek over EUR 150 million from TJ Group and its owners (4.10.2005)

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