Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s corporate watchdog is to lose strength in terms of commissioners as three out of five are completing their terms later this month, raising apprehensions of racketeering brokers skipping regulatory controls.

Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has been going through tough times with regards to asserting as the top corporate regulator since its Chairman Zafar Hijazi become a casualty of the Panama case against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Hijazi, arrested and indicted on the charges of record tampering, is one the three SECP commissioners finishing their terms in December 2017. Akif Saeed and Fida Hussain Samoo are the other two commissioners who would complete their three-year terms as SECP commissioners. The government has the prerogative to appoint a commissioner for second term as well but that requires transparent criteria to be followed.

Commissioner Tahir Mehood who was given a third term with the connivance of former chairman Hijazi and Senator Ishaq Dar, has been facing a case in Islamabad High Court against his third time appointment, observed a well-placed source.

After the three retire this month and Commissioner Mehmood already in litigation, the commission would be left with only one commissioner, Zafar Abdullah, who is the acting chairman as well. According to the source, the government was in no position to appoint commissioners at the corporate watchdog promptly. Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has yet to convince his leader, Mian Nawaz Sharif, to have someone replace Senator Ishaq Dar as finance minister, who has now officially gone on a leave, the source observed.

Absence of a fulltime finance minister has already kept PM Abbassi from empowering the commission by appointing two additional commissioners as provided in the latest amendment to the SECP act by the parliament, the source added. As per the latest provisions of the law, the minimum strength of commissioners in the SECP is seven as against five, the source pointed out. Therefore, after the three commissioners complete their terms later this month, there would be five commissioner’s vacancies at the SECP.

“It would be naïve to consider that a commission with such a beleaguered strength of its composition would rein in the racketeering brokers that are yet come out of the nostalgia of manipulating the mutually owned stock exchange prior to its demutualisation,” the source opined.

Published in Daily Times, December 3^rd 2017.