A Study on the offense of failure to presenting material information by corporations to SEO & relevant Exchange

In a capital market, information disclosure by the listed corporations is important from two points of view: first, its affect on stockholders, decision for trading a particular stock, and second, the observance of justice and equality in making use of financial information in due time. In fact, one of the features of an efficient and just market is that the stockholders will have on time access to financial information, otherwise is not an equitable market. Iranian capital market has a 40 years experience of having no criminal and civil punishment for failure of information disclosure by corporations, but finally the Parliament enacted the Securities Market Low in 2003. In this Low, there is a special chapter for this regard and another chapter for criminal sanctions. Chapter, 6, Article 49, Section 2 prescribes this crime and we will try to explain the elements of the offense and the punishment.