Sebi Begins Pursuit Of Offenders

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is set to get cracking against capital market offenders.

This is significant in the context of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), probing the market crash in March, pointing out the regulator's tardiness in following up its investigations.

The markets watchdog early this week issued orders against ABS Industries which was recently taken over by Bayer. ABS was found guilty of insider-trading. Sebi has also hastened to re-iterate its earlier orders barring CSFB, Nirmal Bang-owned entities, First Global and Ketan Parekh from broking activities.

With respect to ABS, the investigations were completed nearly two years ago, but the order is being issued only now. Sebi also plans to wind up the Arun Bajoria case as soon as possible.

According to officials, Sebi is now in the process of unearthing all old cases in which action has not been taken -- where investigations have been completed but orders are yet to be issued.

The hearing with Bajoria is still pending since he has failed to turn up for scheduled meetings on three occassions so far. Sebi is still debating whether to give him another chance and call him for a hearing or take action straight away depending on the merit of his representation.

Sebi's recent action is being propelled by JPC which has directed the market watchdog to find out what action has been taken with respect to the securities scandal of 1991-92.

The object of the exercise is to establish whether delay in taking corrective measures that time could have led to the recent scam.

During the probe, it also came out that Sebi has been taking an inordinately long time in penalising offenders. "There is a lot of time lag between the completion of investigation and the actual issuance of orders," a source said.

There are at least 10-odd cases on which Sebi is working right now and the intention is to concentrate all its energies on the current cases. There is also the ongoing investigations into market crash.