The Hong Kong Police is investigating the failed bid by tycoon Richard Li Tzar-kai to take city’s telecommunications provider PCCW private, a buyout that was dogged by allegations of vote-rigging in a shareholder ballot needed to approve the deal.

According to the Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources, the offices of at least one of Li’s companies were searched on February 10. They also searched the offices of Fortis Insurance (Asia), which was embroiled in the PCCW vote-rigging scandal last year. The report also said the police had search warrants for Li’s residences, without saying whether they were exercised.

Last year, the city’s securities market regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission, blocked a bid by Pacific Century Regional Development (PCRD), which was controlled by Li, to execute a HK$2.1 billion buyout of PCCW – a company on which Li also serves as chairman. This came amid allegations that hundreds of people, including employees at Fortis, were given shares in the telecoms giant in return for voting in favour of the deal. While the practice was technically legal, a Hong Kong court ruled that it undermined the spirit of the law, and amounted to manipulation. The deal was finally blocked.

The report said that no charges have yet been filed, and the investigation is on-going. Li has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

“We will cooperate fully with any investigation and wish to see it resolved as soon as practically possible. We do not believe Richard Li is the target of any investigation or that any senior management of PCRD or PCCW has committed any wrongdoing,” lawyer Martin Rogers, representing Li, told the wire service.

Fortis Asia confirmed it had received inquiries from the police earlier in the month, but declined to say whether they were related to Li or PCCW. PCCW, the SFC, as well as the police did not comment.

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The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has ruled against UBS in its allegations that three of its former employees stole an algorithmic trading code used by the bank.

The arbitration case found in favour of the three employees – Jatin Suryawanshi, Partha Sarkar, and Sanjay Girdhar. According to the UBS complaint, they were accused of misappropriating trade secrets, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition and “other wrongdoing” while they were employed by UBS Securities.

They were accused of obtaining proprietary company information – in this case the source code for UBS’s algorithmic trading programmes. They were then planning to give the source code to their new employees at investment bank Jefferies & Co, according to the report which appeared in Securities Industry News.

Reports said that Sarkar had allegedly copied 25,000 lines of computer source code from UBS computers. This was roughly equal to the length of one algorithm, or parts of several. He then allegedly emailed this code to this personal email account. Suryawanshi was also accused of attempting to hide his colleague’s theft by deleting the records from a UBS computer.

The three were also accused of starting their new jobs at Jefferies & Co while still employed at UBS. Suryawanshi was accused of a breach of fiduciary duties by poaching the other two programmers to work for other investment bank. The three former UBS employees had denied the charges.

Citing an unnamed source, the report said that the ruling ends the dispute, with neither party seeking further action. All requests for injunctions or damages were rejected, and the arbitration fees will be split between UBS and the three former employees.

Of the three member arbitration panel, one member dissented the final decision but no further explanation was given, the report said.

“We are absolutely delighted to have this put behind them so that they, and Jefferies, can go forward,” said lawyer Lance Gotko, who represented the former UBS programmers.

FINRA said it does not comment on the results of its arbitration cases. UBS has also declined to comment.

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