RIYADH, 13 February — The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency has decided to freeze money used for purchasing equities of the Arab Fertilizer Company (SAFCO) by seven investors who were suspected of gaining access to the company's new policies before they were made public on Saturday.

The business daily Al-Eqtisadiah, a sister publication of Arab News, published on Sunday a report on the purchase of 131,000 equity shares of SAFCO only 30 minutes before  the company announced a 140 percent increase in dividends and its decision to issue free shares on a one-for-four basis to current shareholders.

A SAFCO statement said on Saturday that its board of directors had proposed to raise its paid-in capital to SR2 billion from SR1.5 billion.

SAMA decided to interfere after it became clear that the deal involved more than one speculator. The volume of trade since transactions began till the announcement of new dividends was a total of 134,505 shares among 41 investors. Seven of the investors bought 84,610 shares while one of them 40,000 and the rest between 5,000 and 11,000 shares.

SAMA directed AlBank AlSaudi AlFransi and Al-Rajhi Investment and Banking Corporation, the underwriters, to freeze the amount involved in the spurious deals until investigations are completed. The move by SAMA aims to protect the market, investors and guarantee fairplay in share transactions, sources close to SAMA said.

SAMA will present its recommendations to supervisory authorities to take appropriate action against those involved if its inquiries could establish that the last minute deal was linked to any inside information they received in advance.

An unidentified SAMA source said SAFCO was partly responsible as it did not stop the deals and did not inform the central bank of its intention of announcing the dividend and free shares at the closure of the market.

Share market dealers accused the company of leaking valuable information before it was publicly announced. The dealers said the movement of SAFCO equities in the past few days indicated that there were some people who had learned beforehand that the company's profits soared to SR243 million in 2000 from SR1.3 million a year earlier.

The dealers also pointed out that the equities rose from SR163 in January to SR187 on Saturday at a time when the market in general was experiencing a downward trend.