Mumbai: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), has imposed a five-year ban on industrialist Anil Ambani and 24 others, including top executives of Reliance Home Finance Ltd. (RHFL), from participating in the securities market and has imposed a fine of Rs 25 crore on him.
SEBI also barred Reliance Home Finance Ltd from the securities market for six months with a fine of Rs 6 lakh.
SEBI said that Anil Ambani, with the help of RHFL’s key managerial personnel, planned a fraudulent scheme to siphon off funds from RHFL by disguising them as loans to entities linked to him.
“The Board of Directors of RHFL issued strong directives to stop such lending practices and reviewed corporate loans regularly but the company’s management ignored these orders. This suggests a significant failure of governance, driven by certain key managerial personnel under the influence of Anil Ambani,” SEBI stated.
The markets regulator further said that its findings have established the “existence of a fraudulent scheme, orchestrated by Notice No. 2 (Anil Ambani) and administered by the KMPs of RHFL, to siphon off funds from the public listed company (RHFL) by structuring them as ‘loans’ to credit unworthy borrowers, and in turn, to onward borrowers, all of whom have been found to be ‘promoter linked entities’, i.e, entities associated/ linked with Anil Ambani”.
The other 24 entities which have been barred include Amit Bapna, Ravindra Sudhalkar and Pinkesh R. Shah former key officials of RHFL. The regulator levied a fine of Rs 27 crore on Bapna, Rs 26 crore on Sudhalkar and Rs 21 crore on Shah.
The remaining entities Reliance Unicorn Enterprises, Reliance Exchange next Lt, Reliance Commercial Finance Ltd, Reliance Cleangen Ltd, Reliance Business Broadcast News Holdings Ltd and Reliance Big Entertainment Private Ltd — were imposed a penalty of Rs 25 crore each.
(Input from IANS)
