SC to hear plea against Pearls Group firms on Aug 24

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a plea seeking a direction to the Centre and agencies like SEBI, CBI and Enforcement Directorate to help hapless investors in getting back their hard-earned monies from the Pearls Group's companies.
The Pearls group firms reportedly owe more than Rs 46,000 crore to about 5.85 crore investors and are facing simultaneous probes by SEBI, CBI, ED, RBI and CBDT.
A bench comprising Justices A R Dave and L Nageswar Rao said it would hear the PIL of registered society 'Janlok Pratisthaan' on August 24, the day an Australian federal court would hear a plea in the case.

The plea, filed through lawyer Manoj M Nayak, said an order from the Indian court is needed for the purpose of extending a freezing order on sale of a property owned by PACL in Australia by an Australian federal court as the order will get vacated on August 18.
More than 10,000 properties of the companies are likely to be sold, besides liquidation of their various cash deposits, for paying back the investors spread across various states of the country.
The apex court, which is already hearing a similar case and had ordered SEBI to go ahead with the sale of assets of the companies, has said it would hear the fresh plea along with the earlier one.

The petitioner society, which claims to protect interests Maharashtra-based investors of PACL, has sought directions to the Centre and others to synchronise the information relating to PACL so as to fix the liabilities.
The petitioner submitted that due to lack of coordination between various regulatory authorities, PACL was indirectly aiding their ponzy schemes.
The petition also alleged that through Collective Investment Schemes, the PACL had collected more than Rs 49,100 crores from around six crore investors from all over the country. Various complaints of fraud and serious irregularities were filed against these companies by various customers and investors.