Broken Integrity

What would you do if you discover that your so much cherished investment that you’ve been thinking is safe with your ‘trusted’ broker is not actually there has the CDS statement has been indicating? You don’t have to imagine, because this is the exact nightmare that hundreds of NSE investor are going through. And it doesn’t matter if your stockbroker is one of the few investment banks or the many shaky brokers constantly under CMA’s red list.

Seeing shareholders turning the Barclays Bank AGM into a cry session against unscrupulous brokers was a really sad turn of events. It’s now clear that the NSE, once the symbol of renewed confidence in the Kenya’s investment markets and a darling of all, has been turned into a shell by shameless brokers (owners and employees) who lack any sense of integrity and professionalism in their duty.

I see Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) turn to the electronic shares system, with investor having CDS accounts instead of share certificates, and I shudder. The advent of the same system at the NSE was just but the beginning of the investors’ troubles. Unlike with the physical certificate system the CDS gives brokers a pass to trade in clients shares without their knowledge.

A CDS statement indicating a cash balance is a magnate for brokerage employees to forge documents and defraud clients. Even worse is a case where the statement is forged to indicate that an investor has shares in his account when in real sense the shares don’t exist. The shareholder never receives dividends from companies he’s purported to have invested in nor does he get invited to the firm’s AGM. This happened a lot with Nyaga clients before it went down.

Nothing could be worse to an investor than discovering your investment that has lost over 60% was further pinched by your ‘trusted’ broker/investment banker (after moving two brokers – one collapsing and another being bought out by a bank). Brokers’ integrity at the NSE at the moment is at its lowest and so is investors’ confidence.

Will the perpetrators of these scams ever be prosecuted? Or investors will continue to be given lip service from CMA and NSE on what measures are being taken to bring back sanity to this ‘ponzi’ market? Micah, you’ve been served.