DOHA: A woman stock investor has taken a brokerage company and its officials to court after they told her that she lost all her shares collectively valued at QR17m ($4.7m) in regular trading.
A lower criminal court where the case first went found the manager of the brokerage firm and his deputy guilty and sentenced them to three years in jail.
The court said the duo be deported after they have served the jail term and fined the brokerage company QR200,000 ($55,000).
The Court of Appeals has adjourned the hearing in the matter to May 17 and asked details of trading in her stocks from the Qatar Central Securities Depository.
The higher court has also asked a representative of Qatar Exchange and the two officials from the brokerage firm concerned to also be present on May 17.
The woman said in her complaint filed through the Public Prosecution that she owned stocks worth QR17m and one fine day the brokerage company called her and said why she had left the shares idle and that she should instead trade in them.
She said she visited the brokerage company and they asked her to sign some papers which she did. She said she was asked to sign more than 50 papers over time and she didn’t know what those papers were about. “I went on putting my signatures on those papers with full trust in the brokers,” said the woman.
After a year when she called the brokers she was told by them she had no shares left in her name. The woman said she checked her bank account and after that approached the customer care department of Qatar Exchange (QE). Later, she went to the Public Prosecution.
The Peninsula
