Follow Us on Google
By Amechi Ogbonna
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday said it has commenced investigations into alleged N280 million unclaimed dividends fraud belonging to shareholders of former Afribank.
Mr. Naif Abdussalam, SEC Head of Corporate Communications, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the commission had received complaints of the N280 million fraud allegedly perpetuated by some registrars.
“We have received the complaint and our investigation and complaint units are working on it,” he said.
Abdussalam said that investigation into the alleged fraud would be concluded in a week’s time and the commission would make its findings public once the investigations were concluded.
Some shareholders on March 24 alleged fraudulent withdrawal of N280 million unclaimed dividend belonging to Afribank shareholders.
The shareholders, under the aegis of Progressive Shareholders Association of Nigeria (PSAN), made the allegations in a statement signed by the National Chairman, Mr. Boniface Okezie.
The statement alleged that a company fraudulently withdrew the amount from unclaimed dividends belonging to shareholders of Afribank for the purpose of paying shareholders. It was, however, learnt that the funds were diverted into various accounts of fake shareholders.
“This is a fraud too many in recent times rocking the capital market simultaneously. We therefore call on the authorities concerned to urgently arrest the trend before it consumes the entire market outfit.
“We demand that the SEC, as a matter of urgency, should liaise with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to give directives to Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to cooporate with the police to investigate the matter to give them details of the transactions.”
Recall that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), had recently slammed a life ban on some capital market operators, including Mr Albert Okumagba, the Group Managing Director, BGL Group and his deputy, Mr Chibundu Edozie.
It said the duo among others errant operators are also banned from ever holding office in any public company in the country.
The Commission said the sanctions were the final decisions of the SEC Administrative Proceedings Committee (APC) in the matter of APC/1/2015: Rivers State Ministry of Finance & 31 Others V. BGL Plc & 31 Others.
SEC noted that the companies and their officials breached extant capital market laws and rules that led to a loss of N5.77 billion to 32 innocent investors.
It stated that the decisions on Okumagba and others were final as the decisions have been approved by relevant authorities.
The Commission said it received 32 complaints between 2012 and 2015 against the BGL companies over certain conducts in relation to operations of their Guaranteed Consolidated Notes (GCN) and Guaranteed Premium Notes (GPN). .
Meanwhile some observers believe that the N289 million illegal withdrawal from the pool of unclaimed dividend currently estimated at over N100 billion may yet be another worrisome dimension to the rising wave of malpractices in the nation’s capital market amidst efforts by regulators to instill more confidence in the sector.
