Trading in Bramer Banking Corporation, a lender based in Port Louis, was suspended by the Stock Exchange of Mauritius after the country’s central bank revoked the bank’s license.
According to a statement on the website of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius on Friday, dealings in the securities will be halted until further notice, The Bank of Mauritius pulled Bramer’s license “in the public interest,” it said in a statement a day earlier.
The central bank pulled Bramer’s license “following strong evidence that BBCL is engaged in a Ponzi scheme which exceeds 25 billion rupees” ($690 million), Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth told reporters on Friday. A special desk will be set up in the Bank of Mauritius to give Bramer clients information on their deposits and an investigation is underway into an “unprecedented financial scandal.”
The central bank of the Indian Ocean island nation told Bramer about a “number of significant deficiencies” that it found during an on-site examination between Jan. 22 and Feb. 20, it said in the statement. Bramer had “large withdrawals of deposits” that affected its liquidity and capital, the regulator said.
After Bramer’s license was revoked, the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius appointed Andre Bonieux and Mushtaq Oosman of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as conservators of BAI Co., an insurance company also owned by British American Investment, “to safeguard the interests of policyholders,” the FSC said in a statement on its website.
