Business

Trying to gain personally: Equity trader sacked for ‘leaking confidential information’

Asset management company fires employee for alleged Rs70-million fraud

Kazim Alam March 24, 2015

Rs2.5m was the money made by the equity trader illegally. STOCK IMAGE

KARACHI: One of the share traders working for the country’s third largest asset management company has been fired for leaking confidential information to outsiders for personal gains, official sources said on Tuesday.

UBL Fund Managers, which is the asset management subsidiary of United Bank Limited with assets under management of over Rs57.8 billion, has sacked one of its employees for allegedly committing a fraud of Rs70 million. Unconfirmed reports say the supervision department of the Specialised Companies Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) raided the head office of the asset management company last Friday and seized documents pertaining to the alleged fraud.

Later on, the regulator is reported to have served a show cause notice on the asset management company, as it found one of its fund managers involved in the fraud.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, UBL Fund Managers CEO Mir Muhammad Ali said no fund manager of his company was involved in the fraud. However, he noted that one of his equity traders had “leaked some information to outsiders”.

The equity trader has confessed to the fraud and admitted making as much as Rs2.5 million illegally, Ali said.

With regard to the reported show cause notice from the SECP, Ali said his company had received no such notice. “The company is not under any investigation as far as I know,” he said.

Ali added that the equity trader has been terminated from the company and that ‘appropriate legal action’ is being taken against him.

In an email sent to The Express Tribune, an SECP spokesman said its Market Surveillance Department issues a number of notices to different entities and gathers data to look for any clue of the violation of law.

In response to a question about the status of the reported investigation into the fraud, the SECP spokesman said it is “not appropriate to comment on the ongoing inquiry in the interest of investors at large”.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2015.

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COMMENTS (2)

Chundrigarwala | 9 years ago | Reply Financial industry needs to self regulate and stakeholders should lead by example. Many noteable fruadias are happily employed, a practice that must end. Redflag the sharks!

AK | 9 years ago | Reply Insider Trading & Front Running for taking personal postion in stocks is a major crime in the developed markets. Raja Ratnam, owner of a leading hedge fund in USA is now servicing 20 years of jail term and Madoff has become a cartpenter in prison from being an elite fund manager. However, in Pakistan, many notable brokers & dealers have made fortunes in the past and now run their own brokerage houses. SECP must take strict measures as it has happened from a leading Asset Management Company, who generally calim to spend millions of rupees to put systems in place. Fines equivalent to their entire year's earnings should be imposed and not few million rupees.

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