SAHARA-SEBI STANDOFF

The Supreme Court is set to hear Sahara chief Subrata Roy’s petition on Tuesday. Sahara has raised some points over its legal battle with stock market regulator Sebi

Sahara says it has already paid 93% of the investors. Per investor average deposit is of 8,400. Hence, it can be repaid in cash as per law In last 17 months, Sebi repaid only 1 cr and is holding 5619 cr (including interest), argues Sahara .

    No verification process has been started by Sebi in the last 17 months, disobeying court’s August 31, 2012 order, the company says 
Sahara offered guarantee of the entire amount through bank trustee security; but when it was rejected, the company says it offered irrevocable bank guarantee.This has not been accepted .

    At the heart of the matter lies Sebi’s demand, under directions of the Supreme Court, of an additional 20,000 crore along with 15% interest to investors .The company says Sebi has alleged that Sahara’s investors are fictitious and untraceable. 
 
  Sahara says that in 2008, it had repaid around 4 crore depositors under supervision of the Reserve Bank of India. The company says in response to Sebi’s assertion that many of the 20,000 letters to depositors didn’t elicit a response, Sahara had submitted affidavits and KYC
documents confirming their existence .

    Sahara says it remains Sebi’s responsibility to ascertain the authenticity of its claim that it has repaid most of their money.  If Sebi continues to insist that investors do not exist, then, by the same logic, the regulating body — born out of the specific mandate of protecting investors — also ceases to have any further stake or role to play in the case, the company said in a statement .
    
Sahara says a proper verification process has not been implemented to ascertain the existence of its depositors — despite conclusive evidence forwarded to Sebi

in the form of original documents, repayment vouchers and receipts. Sahara says as a market regulator, Sebi does not have the power to regulate unlisted entities. Sebi is looking to sell properties belonging to third parties which have been kept as security with Sebi, even when it has no authority to effect any such sale without the consent of the titleholders of the properties.

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SEBI trying to ‘siphon off’ investor refund: Sahara

Subrata Roy

Sahara India has alleged that market regulator Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is trying to "siphon off money from the funds" deposited by the group for refunding the investors of Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL). SEBI has claimed that it has spent close to Rs 60 cr in 2013-14 on locating genuine investors of Sahara group companies Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL).

"We have spent a huge chunk of our money on this and we are running out of money now. We had requested the Supreme Court to allow us to use the funds deposited by Sahara India so as we can meet the expenses incurred on this task," said a senior official from SEBI requesting anonymity.

The official explained that SEBI has spent a large amount on not just locating the investors but also on the storage of the documents submitted by Sahara. In an email response to The Sunday Guardian, Sahara India's counsel, Keshav Mohan, stated, "We suspect that this is a highly malicious campaign initiated by SEBI with a very clear intention to siphon off money from the funds that Saharas have deposited with SEBI, purely for the repayment to its investors. It is really unfortunate and unbecoming of a regulator, the way SEBI is blowing hot and cold, both at a time."

He further pointed out that on Thursday, the counsel for SEBI had argued in the Supreme Court that SIRECL and SHICL issues were public issues, while now SEBI has made a plea that Sahara's investors are untraceable. "We ask SEBI to disclose the basis of their contention, else withdraw their statement. The fact is that, when SEBI sent letters to about 20,000 account numbers and did not receive any responses for them, we immediately got affidavits from a large number of such investors and submitted to SEBI the affidavits, authentic Know Your Customer (KYC) documents and photographs of almost all those investors, who the regulator had tried to contact. Those who were already paid, confirmed that they had received redemption of their investments to their full satisfaction," Mohan noted.

In a strong rebuttal to SEBI's allegations, Mohan further added that the market regulator has not been following directions and has not refunded even Rs 1 cr to the investors, in the last 15 months. "It is not known, why SEBI is not following this direction, and why it is only interested in extracting money from Sahara...SEBI's intentions are unfair and acutely malafide."

Mohan also pointed out to the fact that on 4 March, SEBI told the court that it had completed the scanning and digitisation of the 3.03 crore investors' documents provided by Sahara. Therefore the verification process has still not started.

Mohan also recounted that the Minister of State for Finance, Namo Narayan Meena in a reply to a question in Parliament had said that the money given by Sahara is for refund to the investors only and the money would not be utilised for any other purpose. "The money received by SEBI will only be used for the repayment of the investors and till now SEBI has only refunded only Rs 1 cr. This is a sinister attempt by SEBI to eat away investors' money. Till now, in Saharas' case SEBI has not shown any intention to protect the interest of investors, for which it has been constituted... we will not let SEBI make this another Golden Forest Case where investors have still not got their hard earned money and will stand and fight till the end in the interest of our investors."

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