SEC Disregards COPE?

chandrapala · 1 SEC Disregards COPE? Fri Aug 10, 2012 3:00 pm

chandrapala

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This is an interesting topic, added by me to this forum for discussion. Please comment your views...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Sri Lanka had paid Rs.23 million as bonuses to its employees for the past two years violating treasury regulations, the Auditor General has revealed.
The Commission paid Rs.16 million in terms of bonuses to its employees in 2010 and another Rs.7.6 million last year. Later, the parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) which examined the audit reports of the Commissioner directed its authorities to follow the treasury circulars and get covering approval for the payment.
However, the reports said COPE orders had been disregarded by the SEC which made the bonus payment.
Besides, there were numerous irregularities in the purchase and use of vehicles by some officials of the SEC. The Commission had granted an increase of vehicle allowance for the Director General, the Directors and the Assistant Directors. The COPE noted that details about this decision had not been submitted for audit. Also, such top officials had been given the option to get the ownership of their respective vehicles after completion of outstanding lease payments by them. For this, the Finance Ministry's permission had not been obtained, the AG said.
Though the vehicles had been registered with the SEC, these top officials had acted to transfer the ownership of some of them to outsiders at the end of the lease periods. In this manner, five vehicles had been transferred to outsiders since 2005, without any financial gain for the SEC. In 2011, a vehicle used by a former Director General had been sold by the SEC, a year after purchasing it. The official had pocketed Rs.768,780 from this transaction.

Source: Daily Mirror 10th August 2012 Section A4 news.

Last edited by chandrapala on Fri Aug 10, 2012 3:13 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Updated the source.)

Hanoifortune · 2 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Fri Aug 10, 2012 3:14 pm

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This amount is a peanut comparing to the dammage they have done to the small investors and economy as a whole

Invest_SL · 3 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Fri Aug 10, 2012 3:31 pm

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Are these the so called regulators!!!

PBJ_I_LUV_U · 4 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Fri Aug 10, 2012 3:54 pm

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Cars and Bonuses from the poor man's savings!!!

LOVE_CSE · 5 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Fri Aug 10, 2012 5:46 pm

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Another interesting article from Namini Wijedasa of Lakbima fame....

The SEC and CSE is taking moral high ground writing articles after articles and inserting in the media stating that it is catching wrongdoers, although there is no evidence to charge anyone as SEC’s arguments or SEC’s point of view cannot be defended in court. Actually what they are doing is trying to defend themselves for wiping out Rs 300 billion from the Stock market by issuing 14 anti-investor Directives and sending thousands of letters to investors while attacking investors by putting mud on them continuously.
The SEC Commission members are divided due to the way in which activities of the SEC Secretariat and SEC Commission have been handled in the last two years. All were silent in the past but will not be so in the future.
Dissa Bandara, has a invalid post "acting Director General SEC" - according to the Attorney Generals Department, there cannot be an acting Director General when there is no Director General. However, over thousand letters have been sent by acting Director General to investors who have bought five stocks nearly one year ago, where by a fear psychosis has been created in the minds of investors who were making the market lively. Simply the investors do not have to reply these letters as the letter are null and void. All this damage to the net worth of investors and the Economy has been inflicted as influenced by a handful of anti Government financial activists.
The Chairman and the Secretariat have been continuously making statements officially and unofficially as "SEC source" in the last two years to four newspapers about Manipulators, Insider Traders, Fundamentally weak, Mafia Traders thereby making it impossible for new investors to get convinced to enter the market and old investors to re-enter the market. If a prospective foreign fund manager surfs the web he would get hundreds of fearful articles originated from the SEC, and therefore almost no new fund manager would enter the Colombo Bourse. The Chairman of the SEC has conveniently said the market promotion is not the task of the SEC as it is probably the only SEC in the world who actively works to bring down the market.
When the CSE should create the Rules with the Stock Brokers, the SEC has also taken over this function and further gone to almost daily inserting articles against investing in at least four newspapers.

Redbulls · 6 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Fri Aug 10, 2012 5:50 pm

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Thanks for starting a interesting thread.
But why you guys need to open a new account to post the articles.
(All of us know so many of our members do have multiple accounts.)
Any hidden agenda?

wiki · 7 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Sat Aug 11, 2012 9:14 am

wiki

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Actually this is peanut.. but I feel that there is something happening.. HNWI will win this time

stockmania · 8 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Sat Aug 11, 2012 9:49 am

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Redbulls wrote:Thanks for starting a interesting thread.
But why you guys need to open a new account to post the articles.
(All of us know so many of our members do have multiple accounts.)
Any hidden agenda?

Yes. I can see most of the commenters of this post is also belong to one person. I feel some people are trying to start some mafia on this site.

K.Haputantri · 9 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Sat Aug 11, 2012 10:14 am

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Almost all Govt. corporations disregard COPE. Reason is COPE examines the reports submitted by the AG on past performance after several years and some times the CEO's & Ministers responsible are gone or retired. All these violations occur at the instance of trade unions. Its like holding a postmortem. They only recommend & lack implementation powers. It is the responsibility of the Executive to implement its recommendations. I know of several prominent corporations which pays PAYEE income tax of its employees violating all norms of taxation.

worthiness · 10 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Sat Aug 11, 2012 11:52 am

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It needs administrative control & efficiency to conduct the annual audits by AG in timely manner? At least within 3 months after closing the books of accounts. I presume in addition to AG's functions, internal audit units are well placed & operational in public enterprises. If so, such sources will be additional sources for AG's staff for further verification of dealings.

It is unclear one point above. Why COPE examines again the reports submitted by AG office? Please indicate what kind of authority or executive power given to COPE with a source of document for reference.

It is my understanding that any salaried & contracted officer is liable for mismanagement, unprofessional conduct & negligence posed regardless of retirement from service. As said above, lack of sturdy directives & pitiable implementation have helped the dodgers to flee contentedly.

K.Haputantri · 11 Re: SEC Disregards COPE? Sat Aug 11, 2012 12:19 pm

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worthiness wrote:It needs administrative control & efficiency to conduct the annual audits by AG in timely manner? At least within 3 months after closing the books of accounts. I presume in addition to AG's functions, internal audit units are well placed & operational in public enterprises. If so, such sources will be additional sources for AG's staff for further verification of dealings.

It is unclear one point above. Why COPE examines again the reports submitted by AG office? Please indicate what kind of authority or executive power given to COPE with a source of document for reference.

It is my understanding that any salaried & contracted officer is liable for mismanagement, unprofessional conduct & negligence posed regardless of retirement from service. As said above, lack of sturdy directives & pitiable implementation have helped the dodgers to flee contentedly.

As per our Constitution only the Parliament can authorise annual budget for the Government and the AG is authorised to audit all Govt. accounts and report to Parliament via COPE, a parliamentary subcommittiee. Internal audit units should undertake continous auditing and send copies of their reports to the management as well as AG, while AG would undertake an annual audit. The Finance Ministry together with the Secretaries to Ministries (who are considered as Chief Accounting Officers for all Departments & Corporations under their purview) are supposed to control the financial aspects of all instiutions under them. In theory, this is how, the Parliament can keep its controle over finances of the country.

Most internal audit units are not performing properly, thus hampering the quality of AG's annual audit. No priority is given to audits and financial controls and at times good financial controllers are sidelined lablled as anti-govt. eliments.

The real issue here is most vialations of financial regulations are done at the instance of political personnel and the watch dogs and chief accounting officers are helpless often not allowed to perform their duty towords Parliament and the AG and the COPE lacks teeth and are unable to implement their recommendations. Hundreds of such recommendations have piled up at various govt. institutions collecting dust.