(Bloomberg) -- The Philippines’ stocks regulator called for a “thorough” investigation into a brokerage that was shuttered after one of the firm’s employees stole more than 700 million pesos ($14 million) worth of stocks since 2011.

R&L Investments Inc., one of the oldest brokerage firms in the country, is being probed by the Philippine Stock Exchange’s audit and surveillance unit. The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported on Thursday that a settlement clerk siphoned off shares from the firm’s stock inventory into another account and profited from the transactions.

The bourse must conduct “a thorough investigation to unearth the truth behind the transactions in question, identify all parties involved, and uncover the extent of the damage to the stock brokerage, its clients and the overall market,” according to a statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

R&L, a 50-year-old brokerage firm, shut operations earlier this week after the fraud was discovered, the Inquirer reported on Thursday. The value of trades involving the clerk may reach 2.6 billion pesos as the transactions may have affected other brokers, the newspaper reported on Friday, citing people it didn’t name.

An R&L staff who answered the general line on Friday said the broker’s owner Lucy Lee wasn’t immediately available to comment. Philippine Stock Exchange’s Chief Operating Officer Roel Refran didn’t reply to calls and text messages seeking comment.

The bourse’s Capital Markets Integrity Corp. placed R&L under involuntary suspension as it investigates the case. It has initiated audits of records of parties involved, it said in a statement on its website.

“There should be a number of controls in place within the brokerage that should prevent something like this happening especially over a long period of time,” including the monthly count of securities, SEC Commissioner Ephyro Amatong said in a text message.

To prevent a repeat, the SEC has directed the Philippine Depository & Trust Corp. to share the monthly report of a brokerage’s securities position to multiple officers and responsible persons within the brokerage, Amatong said. By the first quarter 2020, the Philippine Depository will have an independent record of client’s securities positions within the omnibus broker accounts, he said.

(Adds CMIC’s comment on probe in sixth paragraph.)

To contact the reporters on this story: Cecilia Yap in Manila at cyap19@bloomberg.net;Ian Sayson in Manila at isayson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Cecilia Yap at cyap19@bloomberg.net, Lianting Tu, Teo Chian Wei

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