Sebi slaps Rs 17 lakh fine on Acclaim Industries, 2 senior officials

Sebi today slapped a penalty of Rs 17 lakh on Acclaim Industries and its two senior officials for making misleading corporate announcements and failing to disseminate price sensitive information to stock exchanges.

Sebi imposed a fine of Rs 12 lakh on Acclaim Industries, its director and CEO which they have to pay 'severally and jointly'. Additionally, a penalty of Rs 5 lakh was imposed on the company, according to a Sebi order.

The regulator conducted a probe between January to December 2012 after it received receipt of reference from BSE regarding the changes in the shareholding of one of the promoters of the Acclaim Industries.

During the investigation the regulator found that Acclaim Industries, its chief executive officer, Rajesh Mehta and director Karsan Chitroda made misleading corporate announcements regarding the proposed merger of the firm with Database Software Technology Pvt Ltd (DSTPL) to exchange and thereby violated PFUTP (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices) regulations.

Moreover, Acclaim Industries failed to inform the cancellation of its merger with DSTPL to BSE.

The information regarding the cancellation of merger by any company is 'price sensitive information'. Such information was required to be disseminated by the company to BSE on continuous basis, Sebi said.

However, the firm failed to disseminate such information to BSE and hence violated code of corporate disclosures practices of PIT(Prohibition of Insider Trading) norms, regulator noted.