The Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms Arunma Oteh,
yesterday gave a graphic details of how the former Director General of
the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Professor Ndidi Okereke-Onyuike and
her management team allegedly misappropriated the commissions’ funds
which led to the near collapse of the capital market.
Testifying before the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee
investigating the near collapse of the Nigerian Capital Market in Abuja
yesterday, Oteh said that the NSE management was found to be weak and
inefficient.
“There were incidences of financial
misappropriation, false accounting, misrepresentation and questionable
transactions such as the purchase of N37 million yacht by NSE and wrote
down the book value within one year by recognising it in the books as a
gift presented during its 2008 Long Service Award (LSA) yet there are no
records of the beneficiary,” Oteh said.
She alleged that SEC bought 165 Rolex
wrist watches for N186m as gifts but only 73 were presented to the
awardees. The outstanding 92 Rolex watches valued at N99.5 million
remain unaccounted for.”
She said that in 2009, N1.7 billion of
the 2008 operational surplus was distributed to council members of the
NSE and employees in violation of extant laws.
She said transactions included the
reclassification of N1.3 billion originally expended on business travels
while N953 million of the amount was reclassified under “software
upgrade.”
She lamented that these and other
infractions by the NSE led to the crash of the capital market from N12.6
trillion at the end of March 2008 to a bottom of N3.99 trillion in
February 2009.
Also yesterday, the Director General of
the Nigerian Stock Exchange Oscar Onyeama faulted the appointment of
eight people by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to
represent it on the board of the exchange.
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