STO, BML and MTDC fined over financial statements

The Capital Market Development Authority (CMDA) has fined three public companies including the Bank of Maldives (BML), State Trading Organisation (STO) and the Maldives Tourism Development Corporation up to Rf120,000 (US$7782) for failing to publish quarterly reports and financial statements.

According to the CMDA, companies – including BML, STO and MTDC – listed under under the Securities (Continuing Disclosure Obligations of Issuers) Regulations must produce a quarterly report after every three months, within the following 30 days.

However, CMDA noted that both STO and MTDC had failed to produce first quarterly report for 2012 within the given 30 day period and therefore each company was fined upto Rf30,000 (US$2000).

Meanwhile, MTDC and the BML were each fined up to Rf30,000 for failing to publish annual financial statements as stipulated under the regulations. The statistics must be published within four months after the end of a financial year.

The companies had requested for deadline extension citing difficulties in producing the report within the given time frame, CMDA said. However the extension was not granted as the reasons provided were not acceptable, the authority claimed.

All the companies have been instructed to publish the reports by May 15.

BML was fined up to Rf10,000 (US$648) in January, after the bank failed to publish the quarterly report for the last three months of 2011 before the requested due date.

The bank said at the time that the report was delayed due to a pending audit.

“The fourth quarterly report requires more work as it must be published with annual figures that must be audited prior to publication,” BML said.