KIEV, Aug. 13 - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a lawsuit for fraud against a number of professional stock market participants, the list of which includes two well-known investment companies and six traders from Ukraine.

According to the lawsuit posted on the regulator's website, the list of suspects includes two Kiev investment companies, namely Concorde Bermuda, Jaspen Capital Partners, as well as Oleksandr Yeremenko, Oleksandr Makarov, Andriy Supranonok (who owns 30% of Jaspen Capital Partners), Ivan Turchynov (all based in Kiev), Nelia Dubova, and Vladyslav Khalupsky (both from Odessa).

According to the lawsuit, the defendants realized an international scam, hacking the servers of at least two news agencies and dishonestly obtaining confidential financial information about companies traded on exchanges from unpublished press releases. Then the attackers used the information to trade in securities and thus received about $100 million of illegal income.