"SEC will take actions, but would not do anything that will affect the investors' confidence," SEC Chairman Mirza Azizul Islam told reporters yesterday.

His remarks came while replying to a question following a discussion on corporate governance for listed companies.

Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) organised the discussion at its conference room at Gulshan in Dhaka. Chairmen, directors, chief executive officers and senior executives of the listed companies joined the meeting.

The chairman of the stock market regulator would not disclose the nature of offense they have so far detected as the investigation was still going on.

He only said the accounts were opened improperly -- the addresses of the account holders were incorrect and in many cases photographs were not attached.

The bank reportedly induced opening fake bank and beneficiary owners' (BO) accounts to grab shares.

Opening fake BO accounts, according to Depository Act 1999, is a punishable criminal offence. Any individual or a company can be punished for five years of imprisonment or penalty and both, according to the law.

Under the circumstances, Islam said if the bank's top management claim that the incidents took place keeping them in the dark it was their failure.

"It is more dangerous if the top management was aware about the misdeeds," he said, adding that it was a complete failure of the top management of the bank -- be it willingly or beyond their knowledge.

The probe body chief, Mansur Alam, who is an executive director of the stock market watchdog, told news agency that they have found authenticity of the allegations and would submit the interim report on the initial findings sometime next week.

He said the probe body is now in the fact-finding process to identify who were involved in the incidents.