Indian counterpart of Hari Tibrewala’s plan to buy a broking firm dashed

livemint.com:

demat accounts, and the prohibition on the transfer of any assets without prior permission from the ED, DACSP has been incapacitated from conducting the transaction as envisaged," Sarbani Bhagat, a director at Dream Achiever Consultancy, wrote in a letter dated 10 June to BLB promoter Brij Rattan Bagri, who had agreed to sell his stake in the brokerage to DACSP.Bhagat further explained that these legal impediments have prevented DACSP from obtaining necessary approvals from stock exchanges and Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), as the company no longer meets the criteria required to run a broking business. The intervening circumstances have frustrated the economic activity intended by the Agreement, Bhagat added, preventing DACSP from fulfilling its obligations within the mandatory timeline of 150 days, which is soon to lapse on 15 June 2024.“We regretfully inform you that we are constrained to terminate the Agreement and will be applying to SEBI to seek withdrawal of the open offer," he wrote.BLB promoter Brij Rattan Bagri and his family had on 17 January agreed to sell their 36.84% stake in the Delhi-based company to DACSP, which already owned 8.45% in it.

Consequently, an open offer was triggered, under which Dream Achiever Consultancy was to buy an additional 26% shares in BLB.Suraj Chokhani, a Kolkata-based resident, and whom the ED refers to as Tibrewala’s Indian counterpart, had made an open offer in January. He was expecting to spend ₹31 crore.On 8 March, the ED labelled Tibrewala a ‘hawala operator,’ saying he had used several entities to launder illicit money made from the betting app into buying stocks in India.