Shankar Sharma to move SC against ban

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has fixed November 3 for hearing First Global Stock Broking’s Vice-Chairman and Joint Managing Director Shankar Sharma’s plea for a four-week stay on its order upholding the ban on his taking part in the securities market.

During this time, Sharma plans to appeal against SAT’s order in the Supreme Court.

Early this year, Sharma had appealed to SAT against the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi’s) order barring him from dealing in securities. Yesterday, SAT rejected the appeal and upheld the ban. Sharma was accused of synchronising trades in certain scrips on a large scale.

One of Sharma’s arguments was that Sebi was relying on data of 2001. “We asked Sebi several times for the investigation report on which it was seeking to penalise us in 2008/2009 for some trades pertaining to February 2001. Sebi’s stand was that it was only in February 2008 that it got to know of these trades. We knew that it had this data from February 2001 and was only seeking to prolong our suffering by using it selectively,” said Sharma.

When Sebi refused to give the investigation report, Sharma approached the Central Information Commissioner (CIC), who directed Sebi to part with the report.

“Upon being directed by the CIC, Sebi gave us this investigation report…which unsurprisingly showed that it had been in its possession from March 2001,” said Sharma.

“We are convinced of the legal and factual strengths of our case and shall be seeking redress at the Supreme Court expeditiously,” he said.