Sebi bans Mehul Choksi from securities market for 10 years, fines Rs 5 cr

Choksi is already facing Income Tax department and ED action

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Monday barred fugitive businessperson Mehul Choksi from accessing the securities market for ten years and imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore for manipulative trading in stocks of Gitanjali Gems Ltd (GGL).

The Sebi order said that Choksi used front entities to undertake contra trades and derivatives transactions ‘to help him in maintaining the price of the scrip of GGL, so that his pledged shares were not invoked or that he did not have to pay additional margin money to the lenders’.

Sebi had earlier sentenced individuals to imprisonment for failing