Suspicions of Insider Trading Surround Pirate Bay Buyers

Shares in GGF rose dramatically yesterday on the news that the company is set to acquire The Pirate Bay. However, about a week ago equity marketplace Aktietorget shut down trading of GGF’s stock after unusually large trading volumes led to a rapidly increasing stock price, prompting suspicions of illegal trading.

Confidence and trust in the BitTorrent community reached a possible all-time low yesterday as news broke that the world’s largest tracker, The Pirate Bay, would be sold to the corporate Global Gaming Factory X (GGF).

The acquisition for $7.8m (SEK 60 million) came as a huge shock to most people familiar with The Pirate Bay, as GGF promised that when it takes over the site it will eliminate illicit file-sharing - the base upon which The Pirate Bay achieved its worldwide fame and enabled it to gather millions of loyal users.

Indeed, most indications point to GGF being only interested in three things - the Pirate Bay’s domain name, the users and the revenue they can generate from them.

However, according to a report, the news of the acquisition didn’t come as a shock to everyone. Indeed, accusations are being made that some individuals knew what was about to happen and took the opportunity to try and cash in.

Around a week ago, equity marketplace Aktietorget shut down the trading of GGF stock after it spotted unusually large trading volumes leading to a rapidly increasing stock price, notably in the absence of any new information to explain the sudden interest in the company.

Indicating they suspect insider dealing and announcing an investigation, Peter Gönczi, executive vice president of Aktietorget told Dagens Industri: “There are reasons to suspect that information was leaked.”

After the price of GGF shares rocketed by more than 150% yesterday, at one point today they had lost 29% of their value, up to date details here.

Source.