Accra, Ghana//-The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has intensified its collaboration with security agencies including the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to clampdown on fraudulent capital market operators in the country.
Speaking at a training programme dubbed –‘Time with the SEC’, under the theme, ‘The Role of the SEC in the capital market’, in Accra, the Director General of SEC, Rev. Daniel Ogbarmey Tetteh urged the general public to do a thorough background checks on capital market institutions before engaging in any form of financial transactions or trading.
“Seek further information to ensure that capital markets are officially licensed by the relevant institutions and report quickly to the appropriate authorities or the law enforcement agencies to effect closure and sanctions if the said capital market does not follow due diligence”, he said.
According to him, when such measures are duly followed and well applied by interested applicants through due diligence, such moves bring sanity and transparency in the capital market space and brings to bear investor confidence pointing however that it enhances the socio-economic growth of the country.
It is for this reasons that SEC has organised the programme with the relevant security agencies to sensitise stakeholders in the security value chain to collaborate with the Commission to go the extra mile to weed out incompetent capital market entities and ensure that the needed rules and regulations are applied adding that the public must be well educated on their operations to avoid victims of market scams.
According to him, government released close to GHC4.3 billion as a bail out during the banking crisis which hit some financial markets and institutions not long ago and explained that the clean-up exercise was as a result of some bad behaviour of capital market operators.
The Director General hinted that there is a wide gap in the savings and investments culture saying Ghanaians account for 32% while that of international is around 68% and again said that savings and investments be encouraged to support the social and economic development of the country.
The Deputy Director General (Legal) of SEC, Mrs Deborah MawuseAgyemfra said her outfit had forwarded cases to the CID and EOCO for background checks on capital market operatives as the Commission ensures strict supervisions to check unlicensed entities.
According to her, the Commission embarks on that security drive to ensure that the capital market space becomes investor friendly hence the need to collaborate with the security agencies.
The Deputy Director General, CID, Frederick Kwadwo Agyei urged security agencies to share the knowledge acquired to help reduce financial crimes, adding, agencies will not relent in its efforts to apprehend and prosecute offenders.
The Deputy Executive Director in-Charge Monitoring and Intelligence, Mrs. Aba Jacqueline Opoku called for effective collaboration with the Commission and the security agencies to ensure sanity in the capital market and said that the Asian tigers became global economic giants due to prudent security activities of their capital markets.
By Ben Laryea, African Eye Report
