Bringing the stock market culprits to book

Chairman of the share market probe committee Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled deserves praise from the entire nation for his inquiry report. The committee has identified around 100 people, many of them powerful, who seem to have been involved in the stock market manipulation. The probe body in its report observed that unscrupulous market operators have pocketed Tk 200 billion of general investors' money and a substantial part of this amount Tk 50 billion have also been moved out of the country. The methods that the crooks used to cheat investors, as identified by the probe committee are asset revaluation, change of face value, direct listing, book building, pre-placement and bonus share issues etc. These are very much in line with the public perception of the latest stock market crash. But regrettably, the finance minister's suggestion to not to disclose their names at this stage, while making the report public, has given rise to some questions. This is being done, no doubt, to protect the culprits and that the veracity of the findings is being questioned. His comments have cast doubt on the probe report itself, which is most unfortunate. There is no denying that the failure to punish those responsible for the 1996 scam has encouraged the repetition of a similar debacle, but on a much greater scale this time. Letting the crooks go off the hook again would be tantamount to giving them free rein. To remove the confusions, the government should disclose all the names and institutions suspected to be involved in the scam. If the government fails to tackle this situation immediately, however, there will be a huge negative impact on the fate of the ruling party. It was clear that voters were getting increasingly unhappy with the present government. Despite pledges by the ruling alliance to rid the country of the scourge of corruption, it continues to corrode the soul of the country's political structure, bringing in its wake an apparent collapse of the country's administrative and political institutions. So, it is imperative for the government to identify the real culprits and punish them in accordance with the law of the country. Besides, the probe body has also laid special emphasis on the SEC reorganisation. The government must not make any further delay on this issue and it should work towards the quick implementation of the probe body's recommendations including the punishment of the manipulators. Lutfor Rahman Ghoraghat, Dinajpur E-mail : mlutforr@ovi.com