New Delhi, May 9 :Special bench of the Supreme Court will on Friday, May 12, hear SEBI’s plea seeking 6-month extension to complete probe in the Adani stocks crash matter.
A three-judge bench of the Special bench, led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr. Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chadrachud and also comprising Justices P S Narsimha and J B Pardiwala will hear the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s plea.
The market regulator, SEBI had on April 29 moved the Top Court seeking a six-month extension to complete its probe into short-seller Hindenburg’s allegations of “brazen stock manipulation” and an “accounting fraud scheme” by the Adani group.
It was opposed by the petitioner, Vishal Tiwari, who had said the six-month time limit should not be given to SEBI. The SC should direct SEBI to expedite the probe as soon as possible, Tiwari said.
SEBI’s plea to the Supreme Court said that its preliminary findings on several possible violations by the Adani Group includes misrepresentation of financials, fraudulent transactions, disclosure norms, corporate governance norms, minimum public shareholding norms, and stock price manipulation.
SEBI has also said that it arrived at a prima facie view based on trading in Adani stocks before and after the Hindenburg report, including possible violations of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) norms, overseas direct investment (ODI) norms, insider trading regulations, and norms on short selling.
The SEBI said that the deadline to submit the status report to the Supreme Court is May 2, as per SC’s March 2 order, which also asked SEBI to “expeditiously conclude” the investigation within two months and file a status report.
Supreme Court in its verdict on March 2 had said it was constituting a committe into the Adani-Hindenburg issue and it will be supervised by a SC-appointed 5-member panel, including O P Bhat, Justice JP Devdhar, K V Kamat, Nandan Nilekani and Somasekhar Sundaresan and the committe will be headed by Justice (Former) Abhay M Sapre. (UNI)