ISLAMABAD, July 2: Former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Tariq Hassan will appear before the National Assembly’s standing committee on finance and revenue on July 7 to clarify his position as when it will meet to discuss a report of a task force set up to probe the stock exchange crash last year, depriving small investors of over $15 billion.
The meeting had been postponed thrice amid allegations of government’s unwillingness to uncover the people responsible for the notorious market crash as some of them were also linked to the privatisation of the Pakistan Steel Mills nullified by the Supreme Court.
“I had submitted requisition for the meeting on May 27 and 26 and on June 7, but each time the government refused to facilitate it on baseless pretexts. We all know that the government does not want Tariq Hassan to appear before us and reveal everything as the man has resigned and is in no more under pressure to save his post,” MNA Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, a member of the standing committee said on Sunday.
He said the sub-committee — constituted by the standing committee in August last year to probe the reasons of the SECP’s failure to implement the task force’s recommendations on market crash, identify people responsible and bring them to justice — had completely failed to come up with anything substantial.
The four-member task force has also been summoned. The task force report has mentioned names of those involved in insider and ‘wash trading’, ‘badla financing’ and market manipulation. However, the SECP failed to implement the task force’s recommendations and bring those responsible for the crash to justice.
“I have letters sent by Dr Tariq Hassan to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, before he resigned informing him that his adviser, Dr Salman Shah, and minister of state for finance, Omar Ayub, are pressing him to freeze investigations into the stock market crash,” the MNA claimed.
He said the role of the sub-committee, headed by MNA Sardar Tufail Ahmed, was symbolic, adding that so far as its role in investigations into the failure of the SECP was concerned.
In its last meeting, the standing committee had criticised the role played by the SECP in the market crash. It was of the view that despite having expertise and mandate to regulate trading on the country’s stock exchanges, the commission had done nothing to safeguard the interests of small investors.
The standing committee had observed that had the commission monitored the unnatural situation in March 2005 in a timely manner, small investors would not have been deprived of their hard-earned money.
The then SECP chairman, Tariq Hassan, had maintained that the commission was handicapped by lacunae in laws under which it was established. Despite prevalent monitoring systems, the SECP could not initiate stern action against brokers who were involved in manipulating stock markets.
MNA Liaquat Baloch said that the standing committee would take up all issues pertaining to stock market crash to arrive at a conclusion.
