Meet Takes Stock Of Bse Brokers' Woes

Senior officials of the share fraud cell were speaking at a seminar yesterday organised by the BSE to tackle the problems relating to fake, forged and stolen shares. The officials said such problems would be reduced if the brokers dealt less with unauthorised sub-brokers.

The officials urged that a full maintenance record of the back office staff at the broker's office, including that for despatch and patavat operations should be kept. According to senior inspector Tripathi (with the MRA Road police station), in most of the cases pertaining to stolen shares, brokers said there was little or no reference record of the back office staff employed.

 

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has called for a meeting of the top brass of the Mumbai and Delhi bourses to discuss the sub-brokers registration issue. The police officials and BSE president M G Damani said several problems relating to stolen and fake shares had linkages with outstation brokers at smaller exchanges.

According to Damani, a new phenomenon of `shares shops' had come up, from where stolen shares were introduced into the market through unrecognised sub-brokers at regional exchanges. These later arrived at the larger bourses like the BSE.

ACP Borade of the economic offences cell said that offences ranging above Rs 20 lakh would be investigated by them directly, while smaller cases would be taken up by the local police station.

Senior inspector Patil said the main problem they faced was that brokers came to them seeking redressal for losses suffered in off market and speculative trading. ``While that problem cannot be tackled by us, we would urge the broking community to lodge complaints on fraud and stolen shares without delay,'' he said.