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ACC to probe'money laundering' by big 10

Omnibus accounts come back into the spotlight

Gazi Towhid Ahmed
The Anti Corruption Commission yesterday formed a committee to find out any incident of money laundering through "omnibus accounts" of 10 big individual and two institutional investors.
The panel will also see whether these investors violated any rules of the antigraftbody.
The individual investors include political high-ups from both Awami League and BNP.
“We will take action against them if we find any violation of rules,” ACC Chairman Ghulam Rahman told The Daily Star.
Such an investigation will boost adherence to the securities rules,
Rahman added.
Headed by ACC Deputy Director Harun Ar Rashid, the five-member panel will have deputy assistant directors Monirul Islam, Hafizur Rahman, Rejaul Islam Tarafder andTajul Islam.
Omnibus accounts are also known as hidden accounts as the surveillance system of the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot access these accounts to find irregularities.
Investors often use these accounts to manipulate stock prices.
A government probe committee found last year that some big investors, including the institutions, manipulated the market through these accounts.
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The SEC will also take actions against them as they bought high-priced and newly listed stocks on credit in omnibus accounts by violating rules.
According to the SEC rules, these types of stocks were not allowed to be purchased with bank loans.
Earlier, an SEC inquiry committee found irregularities in trading by these big investors and institutions through omnibus accounts that involve even hundreds or thousands of investors.
An account manager holds investments of various clients in one such account. A merchant bank acts as a portfolio manager of the accounts and deals with share transaction with only one beneficiary owner's account.
The government's probe committee on stockmarket debacle in 2011 had stated in its report that it found unusual buy-sell and deposit withdrawal in shadow accounts under omnibus accounts, and cited 19 such accounts.
The committee had also advised the government to do further investigation into the shadow accounts under such accounts.
After that, the finance ministry in May last year instructed the SEC to conduct an
investigation into the 19 accounts and submit a report to it.
The SEC later formed a two-member inquiry panel, which submitted a report to the commission in December last year.
The SEC committee examined the transaction ledgers of the 19 accounts in the period between January 1, 2010 and June 15, 2011 and detected violations of securities rules.
The committee found that the individual and institutional investors violated the rules in 2010 when the stockmarket was on an abnormal rise and many securities were overpriced and many new companies were listed on the bourses.
The probe body detected the irregularities after an investigation into 19 shadow accounts under omnibus accounts with three merchant banks, also the loan providers.
According to the investigation report, all the 10 big players, from political leaders to general investors, took credit or margin facilities against high-priced and non-mar-ginable securities from merchant banks.
Since the opening of their accounts, they took out around Tk 450 crore from the market till June 15 last year, the probe report said.