The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reported that it shut down 40 illicit investment schemes in total last year, but it also expressed alarm over the ongoing oversaturation of capital market operators.
Lamido Yuguda, director general of the SEC, promised a new onslaught against those who promote such scams when he said this yesterday in Abuja.
Yuguda emphasized that the Commission will continue its enforcement operations to make sure that such unlawful businesses were not permitted to exist and said that the sealed operators had cheated innocent citizens of billions of naira.
He said: “SEC has been fighting a serious war against Ponzi schemes, we have been alerting people. We have said that investors should only deal with operators that have the registration of the Commission; we have their list on the SEC website. We have always said that if you go to an operator or when an operator approaches you, you must confirm that the company is a licensed operator with the SEC.”
“We have our numbers on how to reach our offices in different zones, and we have done a lot of sensitisations in terms of seminars and webinars in an effort to discourage people from patronising Ponzi schemes.”
“Unfortunately, a lot of people continue to patronise the Ponzi schemes; we have had cases that have been reported to us. Our enforcement department and the police unit have been on many of these cases, trying to resolve them.”
According to him, the Commission has kept up the use of its compliance instruments to make sure that only qualified capital market practitioners operate in the market. According to him, the endeavor has improved prudential return filing compliance, which increased from 81 percent in 2021 to 96 percent in 2022.
The DG expressed confidence that the outcomes of the Commission’s various initiatives would start showing up this year in the form of novel developments in the securities issuance industry, particularly as they relate to digital assets, the commodities trading ecosystem, asset custodianship, and fintech.
