)
A sea of white Gandhi-cap wearing investors stood waiting outside the Financial Technologies office premises with placards in hand urging the government to take-over NSEL. Moving in and out of the crowd were a few policemen who were in place should the situation go out of hand. Once in a while a few voices erupt in unison condemning the promoters of the now-tainted NSEL but other than that it is a rather peaceful gathering.
'We are here to only make our voices heard and inform the government about our problems. This is the common man's hard earned money and there is no account of it now,' said Brijesh Shah, MD of R K Broking, a franchisee of K R Choksey Securities. The broking firm had invested about Rs 10-crore collected from over 75 retail investors of which they have only recovered about Rs 3.25 crore. The rest, he hopes, will be given back to them by the government.
The National Spot Exchange payment crisis erupted late in July this year when the exchange was unable to make payouts to investors. What started out as a few glitches in payment snow-balled into a payment default of Rs 5,500-crore to investors, both big and small. The forum then held a press conference earlier this month when it became clear that the exchange would be unable to honour the payments as these were issued against fudged receipts of empty warehouses.
'Earlier, we didn't know what to do, but now we know where to go and what to do,' said Sharad Kumar Saraf, chairman of National Spot Exchange Investors Forum standing outside the exchange office. 'We have no experience dealing with something like this as this is the first time that something like this happened.'
He pointed out that since the government had given them the licence to set-up the exchange, it should share the burden of the loss. 'This will cause investors to lose their confidence in all the exchanges in India and also cause foreign investors to pull out of Indian markets.'
However, not all who had gathered were convinced. A few murmurs here and a few exasperated sighs there, showed signs of disenchantment with the whole process. 'We know that not much is being done. We don’t even know if the money will ever come back. Of course, we will continue with the protests but what will come of it we are not entirely sure of,' said a broker waiting outside.
For now, disgruntled investors have a few things to look forward to.
With the protest on, the forum is gearing up for another meeting on Thursday with its members to chart out further course of action. Along with this is a plan to meet the 24 borrowers to convince them to make the payouts. 'We will meet with the borrowers in their offices and homes and persuade them to make the payments,' said brokers from brokerage firm Emkay Global Financial Services gathered.
