Economists and left-leaning political activists in a view-exchange meeting on Tuesday blamed a lack of regulation and allowing the share market manipulators of 1996 to get off scot-free for the recent capital market debacle.
Investors took to streets and staged demonstrations because they lost money, not for any political reasons, they told the meeting on 'share market crash and the economics of looting' organised by Ganasanghati Andolan at the National Press Club.
A huge amount of money has been siphoned off the market, even smuggled out of the country, by the market manipulators, the speakers alleged and demanded meting out punishment to them and immediate compensation for retail investors.
When the indices of the country's stock exchanges had been soaring abnormally, the regulators and the government expressed satisfaction at the market trend; but it was the time when they should have taken measures to bring the overheating market under control, said Abu Ahmed, a Dhaka University economics professor and a leading equities market analyst.
Economist Anu Muhammad said the probe committee report on 1996 share market crash was yet to be made public, which paved the way for market manipulation again this year.
He said, 'The manipulation was done by a powerful syndicate of a few people belonging to the Awami League, BNP, and other political parties and the contradictory comments made by the prime minister and a ruling party lawmaker prove how powerful the syndicate is.'
If the regulators remain subservient to the very people who have to be kept on a tight rein, they practically act as the manipulators' helping hands, he said, adding that the manipulators had always remained sheltered under the umbrella of power and no one could touch them.
Anu Muhammad demanded immediate publication of the probe committee reports on both 1996 and 2011 share market crashes to ensure punishment of the manipulators.
Columnist Syed Abul Maqsud said accusing the BNP of share market manipulation by the prime minister and the finance minister was nothing but rubbing salt into the wound.
He heavily came down on the government for physically assaulting the investors traumatised by heavy losses, instead of standing by their side, and recalled that a number of investors had committed suicide after the 1996 capital market crash.
[On the other hand,] 'If a few of the millionaires and ruling party leaders would have lost every thing, the government would surely have come to their aid,' he said with heavy sarcasm.
Ganasanghati Andolan central leader Abul Hasan Rubel also spoke in the meeting chaired by chief coordinator of the organisation Zonayed Saki.
Read the original story on the daily New Age
