Part 1: SEBI’s inaction on NDTV and understanding the violations by NDTV

This is the first in a series of articles we will be coming out with on SEBI’s inaction…

We at PGurus have been writing extensively about The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)’s inaction in its actions against NDTV. This has been happening for some time now and it bears mention that without resolving these issues, it is unlikely that NDTV ownership will change hands. At least that is what is expected of SEBI, which represents the interests of about 40,000 shareholders of NDTV.

What are SEBI’s functions?

SEBI enforces orderly operation of capital markets primarily through four Regulations passed under the SEBI Act, 1992:

• SAST (Substantial Acquisition of Shares & Takeover Regulations)
• PIT (Prohibition of Insider Trading Regulations)
• FUTP (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices Regulations)
• LODR (Listing Obligations & Disclosure Regulations) i.e. Disclosure/Listing violations

Violations by NDTV Promoters Prannoy James Roy, Radhika Roy, RRPR Holding

Four issues / major events have taken place that require SEBI to enforce the above mentioned regulations and take action against the Promoters. All complaints, evidence and other material are available with SEBI from 2013-2016 and unfortunately no action has been taken by them.  Under successive governments, SEBI seems to have its own way of doing (or in this case not doing) things!

To understand the violations better, we have come up with a Table which show the event and the violations that it caused. For instance Column S stands for SAST violation, P for PIT and so on.

It is pertinent to point out that all evidence in the form of illegal agreements signed by the Roys, email exchanges on insider trading and fraud and many other cogent pieces of evidence have been submitted with SEBI since 2014. Further, all documents are also filed and available with SEBI as part of Delhi HC Writ No. 11148 of 2015 (Quantum Securities P Ltd. vs SEBI).

In this series of posts, we will be covering each one of the abovementioned events in some detail.

Continued…