Court: Star Chinese investor pleads guilty in stock case

BEIJING (AP) — A celebrity Chinese stock trader who was arrested after last year's market collapse has pleaded guilty to insider trading and manipulating share prices, a court announced Tuesday.

Xu Xiang was one of a series of brokers and others in the securities industry who were arrested or questioned after share prices soared and then plunged beginning in June 2015.

The defendants were accused of conspiring with executives of 13 companies from 2010 to 2015 to inflate share prices through large purchases and favorable statements, according to the statement.

[...] in April, the general manager of China's biggest brokerage, state-owned Citic Securities Ltd., and two other executives were arrested on similar charges of insider trading, the official Xinhua News Agency reported in April.