DBA highlights corruption and irregularities at BSEC

The Bangladesh DSE Brokers Association (DBA), a member body of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), has levelled allegations of widespread corruption and irregularities against former Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) chairman M Khairul Hossain and Professor Shibli Rubaiyat-ul-Islam.

The group claimed that the chairman of the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission has been engaged in unprofessional and unethical activities for a long time. As a result, the market has not improved and investor confidence has hit rock bottom.

The BSEC was accused of corruption and irregularities during a press conference on the current and future plans of the country’s stock market on Monday (August 12). Saiful Islam, chairman of the organization, spoke on behalf of the DBA at the press conference.

Saiful Islam said, “We believe that this government (interim government) will be committed to building a non-discriminatory, corruption-free and developed country. They will make the country’s economy prosperous by ensuring good governance at all levels. We are willing to provide all kinds of support to this government on behalf of our organization to promote the development of the capital market.”

Millions of investors lost money after the stock market crashed in 2009-2010. Many institutions that provided margin loans for buying stocks went bankrupt. Since then, millions of investors have left the market with repeated losses as the market situation has not improved.

An inquiry committee was formed under the leadership of Ibrahim Khalid, the then former deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank, to find out the reasons and culprits behind the market crash. No action has been taken against the individuals and institutions implicated in the market manipulation in the inquiry report. As a result, the cycle of manipulation became more active and siphoned off hundreds of millions of rupees.

He studied for a doctorate for about 14 years from 2011 to 2024. Professor M Khairul Hossain and Shibli Rubaiyat-ul-Islam served as the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Bangladesh. Both of them came from the university teaching profession and held this position. For a long time, their unprofessional and unethical behavior did not improve the market, but instead made the confidence of investors fall to the bottom.

DBA President said that after the market crash in 2010, Dr. M Khairul Hossain and Prof. Shibli Rubaiyat-ul-Islam came to stop insider trading in the market, ensure transparency, good governance and accountability in the market, prevent manipulation, restore investor confidence in the market through quality IPOs, stop the dreaded anarchy like placement transactions, transparency in audited financial reports of companies, but they failed to deliver on their promise to the market to ensure accountability. Unfortunately, we have observed their personal involvement in each of the above violations.

The amount of corruption and irregularities that have occurred in the name of IPOs over the past 14 years is staggering. Unsuitable, weak, unqualified, insolvent companies have been listed in the market through IPOs. You have highlighted these issues through newspapers and magazines. You have detailed the weaknesses and shortcomings of each IPO.

Recently, our market has implemented a strange rule called “floor price”. The floor price hinders the buying and selling of stocks and damages normal market transactions and investments. The stock price floor price is an unreasonable and harmful rule that interferes with the freedom of investors. Due to this rule, a large part of domestic and foreign investors have left our market. Later, after the floor price was abolished, the market improved for a while, but when the floor price was re-implemented, the normal market trend stopped and investor confidence collapsed.

Nearly one million/million joules