Hundreds of small stock market investors are suffering for being unable to get back their money, which was embezzled by a brokerage house months back.

The embezzlement took place at Moshihor Securities last year and many investors, for example Boni Amin and Sher Ali, fell into trouble.

Ali, a retired service holder, opened a beneficiary owner's (BO) account with Moshihor Securities around 15 years back and invested around Tk 20 lakh in several stocks.

Initially, he incurred losses which eroded his capital.

Later, he decided to invest a big amount of money in the Dhaka Electric Supply Company Limited (DESCO) to avail good dividends each year. So, he bought around 14,000 shares of the company.

Last November, he went to the brokerage house to transfer his shares after hearing news reports that the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) had found shortfalls in the brokerage's customer accounts.

It was then that he came to know that all of his shares had been sold off.

"I lost my savings initially by investing in several stocks. Now the brokerage house has eaten my full investment," he said while talking to The Daily Star recently.

The brokerage house gave Sher Ali a cheque worth Tk 5 lakh, although it was not clear how it arrived at the amount against the share sale proceedings.

Even then, the cheque bounced. Now, Sher Ali cannot reach anyone. "I am very upset and cursing my luck for even investing in the stock market," he said.

However, this is not just a one-off case.

There are a lot of investors who have seen their shares sold off and had their funds embezzled by the brokerage house. Many of them are preparing to stage demonstrations in front of the DSE, seeking the return of their funds.

Boni Amin, a lawyer, opened a BO account four to five years back. His account contained some shares along with Tk 223,000 in funds.

Upon reading news reports about the brokerage house's embezzlement, Amin transferred his shares to another brokerage. However, the brokerage has not been returning his funds for months.

Last year, the DSE identified a Tk 68.58 crore shortfall in Moshihor Securities' consolidated customers' account.

After detecting the deficit, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) imposed travel bans on the managing director, directors, and CEO of the securities house.

Along with this, it was barred from trading shares.

This issue should be resolved soon and investors' funds will be returned in order to bring back their confidence, said Saiful Islam, president of the DSE Brokers Association of Bangladesh.

An investigation is necessary to identify when the shortfall started to arise and how it deteriorated to such an extent, he added.

"This brokerage house needed at least 10 years to generate a such a big shortfall. What was the role of the stock exchange?" he asked.

He said he had heard that there was a shortfall of Tk 68 crore. However, share prices were higher earlier and anything sold in the past must have yielded higher proceeds. So, the shortfall could be much higher, he said.

The DSE and the BSEC should have filed criminal cases over several such incidents. However, no such initiative has been seen, he said.

A mid-level official of the DSE informed that the brokerage house had sought time to refund investor.

But so far, few have been reimbursed.

If it fails to reimburse investors, the DSE has only one option, which is to sell the brokerage's membership and distribute the proceeds among investors, he added.

BSEC Spokesperson Mohammad Rezaul Karim told The Daily Star that there were many investors impacted by the embezzlement and the regulator was receiving associated complaints almost every day.

The stock market regulator has already directed its law department to provide a report outlining the legal steps that the BSEC can take regarding this issue, he said.

The brokerage house does not have enough assets to reimburse all the investors. So, the BSEC is searching for personal properties that can be seized legally, he added.

Moshihor Rahman, managing director of the brokerage, told The Daily Star that he was ill and had not gone to the office for the past year, so he did not know anything about the embezzlement.