Securities regulator fines Monno Ceramic directors Tk14cr

The stock market regulator has fined shareholder directors, including the managing director, of Monno Ceramic Industries Ltd Tk14 crore on a charge of violating securities rules.

Each of the four shareholder directors will have to pay Tk1 crore and the corporate shareholder director Monno Welfare Foundation Tk10 crore.

The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) took the decision at a meeting presided over by its Chairman Professor Shibli Rubayat-Ul-Islam.

Sources at the BSEC said the company had prepared its 2018-19 and 2017-18 audited financial statements without complying with accounts standard as per the Securities and Exchange Ordinance 1969 and Securities and Exchange Rules 1987.

Besides, Monno Welfare Foundation, which holds 1.35 crore shares of Monno Ceramic, violated the Securities and Exchange Ordinance 1969 by conducting a series of transactions of Monno Ceramic shares purposefully to raise the prices.

Owing to this, Monno Ceramic's share prices reached Tk450 each within a short period in 2019, when the shares of the company became "gambling items" on the stock market.

At that time, the foundation had declared to sell a large number of shares of Monno Ceramic. But at the last moment, the BSEC formed an investigation committee and decided that the shares of the company held by the foundation would remain frozen until legal action is taken.

The securities regulator had also directed the Dhaka Stock Exchange to conduct an investigation into the alleged manipulations of the Monno Ceramic share prices. The BSEC on 12 September 2019 punished a number of manipulators.

Currently, Monno Ceramic's share price is Tk126.80, which was stuck on the floor price mechanism at Tk126.80 each on the country's premier bourse for the last three months.