Bangladesh’s Securities and Exchange Commission, the country’s capital market regulator, has fined Arif Ahmed in the amount of Tk 1 crore for his alleged involvement in stock market manipulation and insider trading. According to Bangladesh’s Daily Star, Arif is an investor and a relative of some sponsor directors of Popular Life Insurance. The SEC also fined three directors of Popular Life Insurance a total of Tk 20 lakh, a shareholder Tk 5 lakh, and the wife of Arif Ahmed Tk 5 lakh on charges of insider trading.
The fines, which were imposed after an SEC investigation, must be paid to the SEC within the next 15 days from Wednesday, a senior SEC official said.
“All the fines were imposed to maintain discipline and transparency in the market as well as protect the investors’ interest,” said Farhad Ahmed, executive director of SEC.
The SEC began an investigation in March to find out why share prices of Popular Life reached Tk 5,000 each in March from Tk 811 in June 2007. The investigation showed that some of Arif’s share purchase came bought just before the disclosure of price-sensitive information. During a SEC hearing, Arif’s representative Hasan Ahmed said that Arif did not know the rules and regulations about share transactions.
Now the tough part…. According to this conversion website, the fine of Tk 1 crore (a crore is 10 million) appears to be US$146,146.
