The meeting was held after a series of notifications that they received from the SECP to appear and clarify their positions. According to sources, the SECP decided to penalise the brokers found guilty and responsible for the crisis. The brokers, after their decision to challenge the SECP, have jointly hired a lawyer, Muhammad Mandiviwala.
It is learnt that the lawyer, hired by the brokers, has written to the SECP responding to the recently received notification saying that the brokers were not involved in the March 2005 stock market crisis and they are innocent. He has written that all 88 brokers in March 2005 crisis did not violate the trading rules and regulations set by the SECP.
Sources said that the brokers have not violated the short-selling rules. All the brokers were having physical possession of the shares or in the Central Depository Accounts (CDC) in case they crossed 50 million shares limit in "short-selling" according to the rules and according to him SECP was misinterpreting rule (3B) in case of "short-selling".
He said that the SECP statement that brokers were bound to inform regulator body in this case or face penalty is totally unjustified that misinterpretation of the "short-selling" regulations, he added.
The brokers have decided that they would appeal in SECP if the SECP did not change its statement and withdraw the allegations against them. Finally the brokers would go to higher court at the last stage to prove that they were not involved in the said crisis.