Bangladesh News

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday fined 13 former directors, a former managing director and a company secretary of the Oriental Bank Ltd for breaching securities rules.

The directors and the managing director were fined Tk 500,000 each while the incumbent company secretary Tk 100,000, sources said.

The payments will have to be made to the stock market regulator by bank draft or pay order within the next 15 days.

The former directors were disciplined for not furnishing the commission with uninterrupted audio-visual records of the 18th annual general meeting (AGM) held on October 16, 2005.

The bank had submitted edited minutes of the AGM that was found to have lasted only for five or six minutes. The board of directors did not also place and discuss the agenda properly, said Mansur Alam, executive director of the SEC.

“For the first time the SEC has taken disciplinary action against a bank for not providing a complete audio-visual record of an AGM. And it was done so that the listed companies follow the securities laws properly,” observed Mansur.

The persons on the receiving end are former managing director CM Koyes Sami, Company Secretary Alamgir Kabir Samad and the former directors–Masum Ahmed Chowdhury, Rezaul Karim, Salman Karim, Mehedi Hasan, Zakir Hossain, Nesar Uddin Mohammad Oliullah, Mujibor Rahman, Shahedul Islam, Niaz Ahmed, BMM Mazharul Haque, Patinson Temple, Peter Yu Chun Kuo, and Azian Bin Hajj Ujir.

In August, the Bangladesh Bank had assigned its Executive Director Md Asaduzzaman Khan to take over the roles of the managing director and the board of directors of the Oriental Bank.