The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Securities Commission has brought in the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) to help investigate an entity falsely claiming to be licensed and registered with the financial services regulator.

Gawaine Ward, the Commission’s senior manager for enforcement, told Tribune Business the case involving Ray-E Securities Investment Company was an “abnormal situation” as this was the first time anyone had produced a fraudulent certificate claiming they were licensed and registered with the regulator.

“The first time that we’ve encountered a situation where someone has put up a forged certificate. It is not a genuine certificate and was not issued by the Securities Commission, and everything on it is a fake,” he added. “I would go as far as to say that even down to the signature it looked genuine, but it is not genuine. That certificate is not on the Securities Commission’s files.”

The regulator is now probing who is behind Ray-E Securities Investment Company, and has begun an internal investigation to determine if its suspicions are correct as to connected companies and entities that may be involved, especially given that companies do not have to post their certificates online.

“That’s not a requirement. If any of them do, then that’s on them,” Mr Ward said. Placing such registration certificates online can lead to problems such as the Ray-E certificate where “you take something online, reconfigure it and create a forgery, and then you pass it off as genuine”.

The Securities Commission has reported the case to the police, making it a criminal matter. “We have to make a formal complaint to them right now, because it’s not just that entity,” Mr Ward said. “You may have noticed over the course of the last few months, we’ve had an issue with these fake websites popping up saying that they are regulated by the Securities Commission.

“It’s been quite a number of them. We’ve issued notices on all of them and we’ve been reporting it to the police, and working with the police to have this one resolved.”