According to the Financial Times, a US court has fined Tingo CEO Dozy Mmobuosi $250 million for fraud and barred him from serving as a director of a public company.
Details
A US District Court in New York gave final judgment against Dozy Mmobuosi and his companies after he failed to make any representations in the civil complaint filed last December by the SEC.
Mmobuosi and his companies, Tingo Group, Agri-Fintech Holdings, and Tingo International Holdings, had “failed to answer, plead, or otherwise defend” themselves in the case.
Flashback
The US Securities and Exchange Commission charged the Tingo CEO and three of his companies for inflating the financial metrics of his companies and operating subsidiaries to defraud investors.
The SEC in its report stated that the “purported assets, revenues, expenses, customers and suppliers” of the Tingo group were all “virtually entirely fabricated”.
Digging Deeper
A group called Hinderberg Research put out a report detailing fraudulent activities of the company which prompted an official investigation by the US SEC.
Tingo claimed it had more than 9 million customers in Nigeria, most of whom were farmers, and that it had a food processing business.
Tingo Mobile reported cash and cash equivalents of $461.7mn for 2022 in its Nigerian bank accounts, but the SEC said its balance was less than $50.
Source: Financial Times
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