Three months after the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC gave its final decision that BGL Group should be blacklisted, the once-high-flying asset management company is finally becoming history.
A visit to BGL’s website shows that all contact plugins, chats, data and research portals have been deactivated either by the hosting companies or the receiving agents over-seeing BGL’s bankruptcy.
The once very busy site is now a ‘shell’ only serving as a relic that a company of sort existed. It will only be a matter of time before the hosting expires and the company’s trace on the Internet finally disappears.
BGL Group was embroiled in series of securities fraud and embezzlement of funds. The SEC’s APC waded into the matter after it “received several complaints against the 1st and 2nd Respondent over failure, refusal and/or neglect to liquidate their investments in both the Guaranteed Consolidated Notes (GCN) and Guaranteed Premium Notes (GPN). Upon investigation of the complains it was discovered that the indebtedness of the 1st & 2nd respondent to the complainants stood at NGN2, 184, 474, 991.65
Albert Okumagba, the company’s CEO and his board were ordered to return about NGN855 million back to investors as a compensation for their financial investments.
In its prime days, the company had four subsidiaries. The main group was under the BGL Plc, BGL Securities handled the brokerage side of its business, BGL Asset Management was one of the most popular fund managers before and during the banking boom and bursts. BGL Private Equity also did major deals in the debt and capital markets fund raising.
For many years to come, the ghost of BGL will continue to haunt the capital markets. It dented the image of all market makers and fund managers, the SEC and remaining operators have a lot to do in bringing back confidence to investors who see the BGL collapse as one too many.
