Consolidated Capital Market Stakeholders Forum (CCMSF) has backed the recently released forensic audit which the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has against Oando Plc.

In a statement signed by the Forum’s president Umar Usman, CCMSF took a swipe at insinuations in some quarters that the capital market regulator was unfair to Oando Plc in the report of the forensic audit.The group noted with great concern how the issues surrounding the forensic audit of Oando Plc is degenerating. They, however, frowned at the fact that Oando’s issue is being compared to problems earlier faced by Ecobank Transnational Incorporated. The statement read partly,

“The Oando issue was a forensic audit, ETI was corporate governance audit. The scopes were totally different; they were not the same. It is laughable that they are being compared.

“Also, during the ETI investigation, it is on record that the ETI management and board co-operated with SEC, they did not take SEC to court to stop the investigation, they did not publish things about SEC in papers like we are seeing now.

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“Remember when this audit was to commence initially, Oando took SEC to court and that initially delayed the entire process. The management too were not co-operative from the beginning. With ETI, the management co-operated from the beginning of the investigation till the end.”

Umar went further to state that during the investigation, the auditors engaged the management; a move he said was initially resisted until much later when the forensic auditors were allowed to carry on.

On the issue of Administrative Proceedings Committee (APC) not being in place in SEC, Umar advised those peddling such information to go through the relevant laws properly because the law does not state that APC must be convened before companies are sanctioned.

It could be recalled that Oando and SEC have been at loggerheads since the regulatory body released its investigation into the activities of the management of the company. SEC accused the management of market abuses and false disclosures, demanding the resignation of Tinubu, the Board chairman, and other executives and directors of the company.

Source: Nairametrics

Samson Oyedeyi