The trustee shall act on behalf of and in the “exclusive interest of investors” as obliged by the trust deed and law, reads an agreement signed by Sandhani Life Insurance and fund manager Universal Financial Solutions (UFS).
More than one and a half years after the trust deed was signed, investor National Bank Ltd (NBL) made a complaint that it has failed to get any report on the utilization of its investment from the fund manager UFS and the trustee Sandhani Life Insurance.
The managing director of the UFS, Syed Hamza Alamgir recently made news for having fled the country with Tk 1.58 billion from four unit funds that were under the supervision of state-run Investment Corporation of Bangladesh. The two other funds where the NBL invested Tk 500 million were under the supervision of Sandhani Life Insurance.
Sandhani appointed an auditor and valuer and collected quarterly reports from the fund manager as required by the law. But when there were anomalies, it should have reported to the securities regulator and filed a lawsuit on behalf of the unit holders, according to the rules and the deed.
It should have scrutinized the reports and made sure if the assets were in the forms as declared. Then the trustee could report the fund misappropriations to the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC).
Instead, the BSEC, when informed by a third party about the fund embezzlement, launched an investigation last month, a senior official from the…
