Ex- CEO of Kimberley Diamonds arrested

Alexandre Alexander also known as Alexandre Dergouchine, the ex-head at Kimberley Diamonds was recently arrested at Sydney airport on the allegations of misleading the stock market, by false statements made to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), between October 2013 and March 2014, as per reports.

He was arrested by the Federal Police and investigators from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

He was charged with four counts of making false and misleading statements to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and each charge has a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and a fine worth $34,000, reports add. He has been granted bail, has been forced to surrender his passport to a Sydney court, as part of bail conditions which restrict his travel.

The allegations are that statements relating to the company’s future earnings forecasts and authorised by Mr Alexander, were false and misleading as they did not disclose the fact that they assumed that they would obtain a 30% increase in the price that Kimberley Diamonds would receive in the last quarter of the 2014 financial year, for its rare yellow diamonds, as per reports.

During this term, the shares prices of the company dipped by 41.5 percent and a drop in earnings for the last quarter of the 2014 financial year from AUD$7.5 million to AUD$1.5 million. In July, Kimberley Diamonds announced that Kimberley Diamonds Company Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kimberley Diamonds, and the owners of the diamond mine at Ellendale, had been placed into voluntary administration, reports add.