The background of the Supreme Court’s decision is a long-running dispute about whether Juhani Hintikka broke the law when he bought Comptel shares in 2014. Hintikka denied his guilt.
The Supreme Court (KKO) has condemned the software company Comptelin former CEO Juhani Hintikan to a suspended sentence for aggravated misuse of insider information.
Today, Hintikka operates as a listed company WithSecuren as CEO. Comptel was bought out of the stock exchange in 2017.
The background of the long-lasting legal dispute is the stock transactions made by Hintikka in 2014. In October–November 2014, Hintikka bought Comptel shares for approximately EUR 337,000. In December of the same year, Comptel said that it had signed a contract Telenor Norway – with the telecommunications company.
According to the Supreme Court, Comptel’s share price rose by more than 50 percent in December 2014 and remained permanently at a higher level than it was before the news of the agreement.
A long legal dispute in the background
The matter has been handled in different court levels for years, and the decision of the case has changed at each court level. In 2019, the district court found Hintika guilty of basic misuse of insider information, the court of appeals in 2022 found him completely innocent, and now the supreme court found him guilty of gross misuse of insider information.
Hintikka himself has denied that he was guilty of a crime in his stock transactions. Hintikka demanded that the charges be dismissed in the Supreme Court.
The point of contention in the case has been particularly whether Hintikka should have been aware in advance of the price reaction caused by the announcement of the contract.
The Court of Appeal held that Hintika did not have “accurate information of a nature considered inside information to assess the effect of the order on the value of the company’s shares.” According to the Court of Appeal, Hintikka had to know that receiving the order was likely, but he would not have had grounds to estimate that receiving the order was certain or to know exactly when it would be received.
In its majority decision, KKO disagreed. According to KKO, Hintika “when buying the company’s shares had unpublished, precise and essentially insider information affecting the value of the company’s shares and that he had used this information to his advantage when acquiring the shares.”
In their dissenting opinion, some of the judges of the KKO considered that Hintikka was only guilty of basic misuse of insider information.
The Supreme Court sentenced Hintika to a four-month suspended prison sentence. In addition, he was sentenced to forfeit 36,900 euros to the state as proceeds of crime.
It was reported earlier STT.
The WithSecure board is evaluating the situation
Later in the afternoon, WithSecure itself also published a short stock exchange release on the subject.
“WithSecure’s board of directors evaluates the Supreme Court’s verdict and makes the necessary decisions without delay,” WithSecure’s board chairman Risto Siilasmaa tells.