Wednesday, January 12, 2011

How Much Fine For Cooking Your Books? Part III

On today's Business Times:

  • Heavier sentence for 2 ex-MEMS directors

    Published: 2011/01/12

    THE High Court has allowed the Securities Commission Malaysia’s (SC) appeal against the Sessions Court’s sentence of RM300,000 fine each on the former directors of MEMS Technology Bhd, Ooi Boon Leong and Tan Yeow Teck.

    The High Court retained the Sessions Court’s original fine and enhanced the sentence with a six-month imprisonment term each following the appeal by SC for a higher sentence in view of the severity of the offence.

    In February last year, Ooi and Tan, had pleaded guilty before the Sessions Court and were fined RM300,000 each for authorising the furnishing of misleading information to Bursa. — Bernama

Only a six-month imprisonment?

Posted 9th Oct 2010: Lack Of Punishment For Corporate Crimes!

  • And then the fiasco!

    I could be wrong but I felt it was important because Mems Technology was highly regarded by the local brokerage houses. All of them gave the stock a high recommendation.
    In the posting MEMS Told To Correct Its Financial Statements!, I noted that ".. by overstating its earnings by a mere 8 million, based on market capital, Mems managed to value itself 531 million. ". Mems on the date of that posting, on 28th Oct 2009, has a market capital of a mere 42 million!"

30th June 2010: Have You Taken A Look At MEMS lately?

  • MEMS was to rectify the financial statements by excluding RM49.183 million from its revenue for all the three financial statements.

    The basis of the SC's directive was that the amount was derived from transactions that never took place in the respective financial years and period.

Transactions that NEVER took place!

YES! That bad!

Insane isn't it?

All one need to do is add in sales transactions that NEVER existed and the stock market will value your company by some extra 500 million!

500 million!

And your fine?

300,000 fine and a 6 month jail term?

Is that enough?????

See also: How Much Fine For Cooking Your Books? and How Much Fine For Cooking Your Books? Part II

6 comments:

Gamelion said...

How about the auditors who r willing
to collude with those directors. Of
course they will come out with a very reasonable excuse such as it is not within our scope of coverage or it is not our job to detect every fraud commited by the company !

Moolah said...

I wonder how many really care...

Gamelion said...

It is better to be a conman
rather than be a king !

Moolah said...

Well with such punishment, what other conclusion is there?

Look at the stock markets. Look at the past events that had happened where certain XXX companies had tried to take advantage of the minority shareholders. Today? Market is hot. And nobody gives a damn about the past events. All they care about is how high XXX stock can go.

solomon said...

If I am one the shareholders, i wish them to be canned. Leave them the scar that they could remember.

Revoke the license on the audit firm. Hey, some of the auditors could be the FC for other company as well in the future....

But this remains fantasy of the onlookers...my dad said why be a chef, if u can be book cooker? Sigh....when another BOLEH??

random said...

"Look at the stock markets. Look at the past events that had happened where certain XXX companies had tried to take advantage of the minority shareholders. Today? Market is hot. And nobody gives a damn about the past events. All they care about is how high XXX stock can go."

How true.