By Dean Seal

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Shanchun Huang with allegedly inflating Future FinTech Group's share price just before he took over as the company's chief executive.

The SEC alleged in a complaint Thursday that Huang used manipulative trading techniques in early 2020 to push the fintech firm's share price up, with the goal of preventing it from being delisted from the Nasdaq exchange.

According to the complaint filed in New York federal court, Future FinTech's founder and former chief executive approached Huang in late 2019 or early 2020 about becoming the company's next chief executive.

Huang allegedly started using an account in Hong Kong to trade in Future FinTech's stock in January 2020, when the shares were at risk of being delisted because they had fallen below the $1 minimum bid price.

The SEC claims Huang bought more than 530,000 shares over a two-month period and traded at a volume large enough to represent a high percentage of the stock's overall daily volume. Huang also placed multiple buy orders in short time frames and made other trades that "generally would not make economic sense for an investor who sought to buy the stock at the lowest available price," the agency alleged.

"Huang's trades were intended to, and at times did, push the Future FinTech stock price upward," the SEC said.

The regulator also claims that after Huang was named Future FinTech's CEO in March 2020, he failed to make required filings about his ownership stake in the company until a year later, by which time he no longer owned any company stock.

The SEC seeks fines and to have Huang barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company.

A representative for Future FinTech didn't respond to a request for comment. The company's website didn't appear to be active on Thursday afternoon.

Write to Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 11, 2024 17:27 ET (22:27 GMT)