SEBI rejects consent pleas of 14p entities, including Reliance Industries
The Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) turned down various entities' 149 consent applications related to violations of stock market's several rules and regulations.
Reliance Industries Ltd is also among those whose consent applications have been rejected by the capital market regulator. While turning down the consent pleas, the regulator said that its decision was in line with the modified consent plea rules.
The regulator made modifications in the rules for considering such applications following severe criticism that the consent applications allow offenders to go free lightly. It may be noted here that under the consent application an individual or a company under a probe pays a penalty without admitting guilt.
Publishing the list of all those cases in which consent pleas were turned down, the regulator said, "The following consent applications have been rejected as they are not found to be in consonance with the circular dated May 25,
2012."
The list of turned down consent pleas includes insider trading rules violations by Reliance Petroinvestments, Manjoj Modi and Smita Modi, in the former Indian Petrochemicals Chemicals Ltd that was acquired by Reliance Industries.
The list of distinguished companies whose consent applications have been turned down also includes Sanwaria Agro, HSBC Investdirect, GMR Holdings, Valecha Engineering, India Infoline and Religare.
Under the modified rules, front-running, insider trading, failure to make an open offer to a listed firm's shareholders and misuse of net asset value (NAV) of mutual funds (MFs) can not be settled through consent pleas.
