Sebi panel for compensating victims of public issue scam

Wadhwa Committee wants recovery of Rs 95 crore from those behind the fraud.

A panel set up by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has suggested recovery of Rs 95.96 crore from those who rigged initial public offers (IPOs) between 2003 and 2005. The amount, it said, should be distributed among the affected investors.

The scam in 21 IPOs, including that of Jet Airways, NTPC, IDFC, TCS, Yes Bank, Gokaldas Exports, ILFS Investsmart, Suzlon Energy and Shoppers’ Stop, related to scamsters cornering shares reserved for retail investors by opening fictitious accounts.

The suggestion was given by the Justice Wadhwa Committee.

The value of the shares that were illegally cornered and which were in depositories worked out to be Rs 147.85 crore, said the committee. The balance, kept in bank accounts frozen by the Central Bureau of Investigation, stood at Rs 1.2 crore as on October 31, 2007, it said.

The quantum of unjust gains based on allotment to accounts is approximately Rs 95.69 crore while the value of the holdings in the frozen demat accounts in both National Securities Depository Ltd and Central Depository Services Ltd of the key operators and financiers as on October 31, 2007, works out to about Rs 17.85 crore.

The committee said for the purpose of payment to the affected retail applicants, the difference between the closing price of the shares on the first day of listing/trading on the National Stock Exchange and the issue price should be considered.

“These applicants will not be entitled to the benefits of the price movements subsequent to the listing,” said the report of the committee.

The committee said that those who did not get any shares should be reallocated money equally from the recovered amount till they each received the gains from the minimum shares allotted to the lowest category in the IPO.

Once that number was reached, any left-over money be reallocated to the partly-successful applicants, the committee said.

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had assured the Lok Sabha that steps would be taken to reallocate shares to persons who had lost out on allocation of shares on account of the IPO scam.