Financial advisor clients lost $449,596 in Mississauga, lifetime ban issued
Published May 23, 2024 at 12:02 pm
A financial advisor who worked in Mississauga, but appears to have fled the country, is banned from working in the industry in Canada.
Muhamad Asghar Sadiq received the ban and a fine of $750,000 for alleged misconduct between March 2011 and October 2016 while he worked for Sterling Mutuals Inc., a Mississauga-based financial advisor company, according to Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization of Canada documents released this week.
Sadiq resigned from Sterling Mutuals in January of 2019 and is not currently registered in the securities industry in Canada in any capacity, the documents state.
In 2021, the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada started a disciplinary proceeding and hearings were held in August and November 2022 but Sadiq did not appear nor did he send a representative.
The document states he may have returned to his homeland, Pakistan, and he may have left purposely before authorities were alerted to his misconduct.
The hearing found Sadiq failed to use due diligence to learn and accurately record or intentionally misrepresented the essential facts to least 11 clients.
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Among other things, Sadiq misappropriated or failed to account for monies received from seven clients and one individual, the documents state.
He also improperly recommended or placed 10 clients in a leveraged investment strategy between March 2011 and June 2015, according to the documents.
Leveraged investing is a technique that seeks higher investment profits by using borrowed money.
Clients took on loans ranging in size from $50,000 to $250,000 to follow the strategy recommended by Sadiq and collectively, they experienced losses of $449,596.
“These investment losses have caused significant financial hardship for the clients,” the document states.
He chose clients who were “unsophisticated and easily misled,” the documents state.
“Simply put, the Respondent’s conduct wasn’t simply professional misconduct, it could be characterized as criminal behaviour. However, the Respondent fled the jurisdiction of the Canadian criminal courts,” the document states.
For more information on this case, see the documents here.
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