ISLAMABAD, May 1: The task force that initially investigated the March 2005 stock market crash is likely to resurface the issues of missing data of share transactions and the composition of the US forensic team at the meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance here on Thursday.

The issues are being revived at a time when the SECP has exonerated brokers from the charges of a planned collapse of the stock market two years back on the basis of the report of a US forensic team - Diligence. The team had concluded at the end of a $1 million investigation that there was no evidence that could prove that brokers had manipulated the market in a planned manner.

Justice (Retd) Saleem Akhtar, who had led the task force, Dr Zubair, a member of the task force and Dr Tariq Hassan, former SECP chairman, who have been invited to the meeting, are expected to give a tough time to incumbent SECP chief Raziur Rehman.The task force, which had conducted preliminary investigations weeks after the market crash, had feared a planned collapse of the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) allegedly by a dozen influential brokers that had caused $13bn losses to small investors.

Some members of the committee told Dawn that Dr Tariq Hassan would pick up the controversial issue of the composition of the Diligence. Dr Tariq is of the view that some important officials, who were part of the Diligence team, had not been included in the investigation process. He has alleged that the officials had been left out of the team intentionally.

The former SECP chief has raised a new controversy by alleging that the US forensic team did not know many important aspects of the Pakistani bourses including Badla financing – a factor that many experts still believe was one of the major causes of the market crash.

Some members of the committee and Dr Tariq Hassan have already challenged the terms of reference (TORs) of the Diligence. They have labelled Diligence as charter accounts firm unable of conducting forensic probe. This has given air to many speculation and also made some members of the committee alleged that the government had done so in order to get tailored results from the crash probe.

Dr Tariq has alleged that the data of bids and offer pertaining to March 2005 was available with SECP prior to January 2006. He said the data had “disappeared” from the records of the SECP after he was forcefully relieved of his post.

However, the incumbent SECP chairman, Raziur Rehman, has been saying that the commission had directed the KSE to provide it complete data including order data (bid and offer) so that it could analyse the abnormal level of activity as witnessed ahead of the crash.

In response to the SECP directives, the KSE, according to Mr Raziur Rehman, provided the executed trade data only. The KSE management had informed the commission that the historical data retained by the exchange was limited to the extent of the executed trade.