Home ›› 27 Jun 2022 ›› Stock
The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) has received claims of Tk 39.82 crore from Banco Securities Limited’s 2,880 investors, against whom the bourse suspended operations in the last year for alleged misappropriation of customers’ accounts.
The country’s prime bourse requested clients of the brokerage house, which allegedly embezzled huge amounts of money from the house’s clients, to make claims for their money and shares by April 03 of this year.
As per DSE data till the dateline, a total of 2,880 investors claimed a total of Tk 39.82 crore from Banco Securities. 657 investors claimed a total of Tk 22.74 crore. A total of 2,149 investors have applied for share transmission. Both claim the money and missing shares of 74 investors, which amount to Tk 3.63 crore.
On June 15, the DSE suspended the operations of Banco Securities for alleged embezzlement of Tk 66.59 crore from consolidated customers’ accounts.
The stock exchange’s top official told the Business Post, that among the aforementioned claims, the authorities of Banco Securities have settled one claim amounting to Tk 1.55 crore by handing over personal flats and land.
The brokerage house has deposited Tk 9.87 crore with DSE and, along with the DSE dividend of FY 2019-20 and 2020-21, the Trading Right Entitlement Certificate (TREC) holder company has a total fund of Tk 10.13 crore under the custody of DSE.
The stock market regulator, BSEC, has instructed DSE to settle two claims totaling Tk 50 lakh on a priority basis and inform the commission accordingly.
Sources said that the BSEC 15 verbally instructed DSE that the small investors’ claims would be settled first on priority basis.
However, based on the received claims as of April 03, 2022, approximately 25 per cent of the total claim amount may be paid in the case of allocation on a pro-rata basis. The remaining claim will be payable by the TREC holding company in due course, DSE officials said.
The Anti-Corruption Commission has filed a police case against the authorities of the TREC holder company. The chairman of the TREC holder company planned to leave the country but has been detained by law.
On June 29 of last year, Abdul Muhith, chairman of Banco Securities, was detained on a charge of misappropriating funds from investors.
The stockbrokers secretly used a parallel software database to report fabricated cash and securities balances, buy and sales order execution updates to the clients as well as the regulators.
Stock investors having accounts with the houses were getting regular updates from the stockbrokers of their stock holdings, buy and sales order executions.
The brokerage house had also changed the mobile numbers of the investors so that the clients could not know the trading activities in their BO accounts.
Meanwhile, merchant bank Banco Finance and Investment Limited, a related party to Banco Securities, sold 62.62 per cent shares of the merchant bank to SIM Group at Tk 9 crore and deposited the amount with the Dhaka Stock Exchange for settlement of investors’ claims.
For a similar offense, the BSEC earlier ordered the suspended Tamha Securities to liquidate its assets and deposit the proceeds at the DSE by May 31 for the reimbursement of the client’s money.
The operations of Crest Securities were suspended. In June 2020, the owners of Crest Securities Limited went into hiding after allegedly embezzling Tk 48 crore of clients’ money.
