Sahara-Sebi legal tiff likely to continue
Sahara group's prolonged legal battle with market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India will continue in the Supreme Court despite the death of group chief Subrata Roy, said legal experts, including the lawyers of the two sides.
Sebi had in 2013 filed a contempt of court case, accusing the Sahara group of not complying with a top court order for the refund of more than '24,029 crore collected by two Sahara entities from 33 million bond investors, with an interest of 15% from March 2008.
Sahara India Real Estate Corporation and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation had illegally raised the funds by breaching Sebi rules, the regulator had claimed. The Supreme Court had ordered the companies to deposit the funds with the market regulator to refund the investors and appointed retired SC judge Justice BN Agarwal to oversee the process.
Sebi had rejected the «refund theories» propounded by the Sahara group.
The regulator had so far received more than 19,650 applications involving 53,687 bond/control numbers. Refunds on 17,526 applications involving '138.07 crore (including interest) had been made.
The remaining applications were closed either due to their records not being traceable in the documents provided by the companies or on account of no response received from the bondholders.
According to Sahara, the company has repaid at least '19,000 crore to Sebi of the '26,000 crore owed by it. Sebi pegs the yet-to-be-paid amount (including interest) to investors at '48,000 crore.
