The ordinance empowering the capital market regulator to access the call records ? and even attach the assets ? of an accused party has provided a huge fillip to investigations. In one particular case, the watchdog was able to resolve the case in merely two weeks by accessing the call records, said senior officials at Sebi.
Last week, too, Sebi ordered attachment of the bank accounts of members of the Panchal Group to recover a penalty of over R70 crore, which was imposed more than six years ago for their role in the IPO irregularities scam.
According to a senior Sebi official, the new powers have helped in expediting the whole investigation process as banks and telecom service providers have become more cooperative when faced with Sebi notices.
?It is not that Sebi did not use call data records earlier while investigating certain cases. But getting the data was a long-drawn process as the service providers were under no kind of obligation to share the information with us. This has changed now. Call records are proving to be a very useful input in pinning down many entities,? said a senior Sebi official wishing not to be named.
Sebi used call records data to investigate the matter related to Pyramid Saimira in 2009, but it took nearly four months for the capital market regulator to come out with a detailed order. Sebi recently ordered the attachment of bank accounts of PS Saminathan, promoter of Pyramid Saimira, to recover an amount of R1.275 crore.
Sources add that so far only one case has been completely solved using call records although there are many ongoing probes wherein such data are being looked at to build a case against the alleged wrong-doers.
On August 20, Sebi barred Imtiyaz Khanda (proprietor of Right Trade and Sai Traders) and Vali Ghaniwala (proprietor of Bull Trader and Laxmi Traders) from dealing in the securities market. They were found to be offering intra-day tips and stock advisory services through SMSs via mobile phones.
Interestingly, one of the messages circulated by these entities reached the cellphone of none other than Sebi chief UK Sinha. ?If you want to earn daily R5,000 to R75,000 in equity and MCX market with our confirm intraday tips, contact now…? was the message that triggered the probe.
?One fine day when I was sitting in my office, I received an sms saying that invest in certain things and you will get guaranteed returns of 25%. I asked my people to follow it up. We were able to solve the case in two weeks,? UK Sinha told FE recently. ?Because this ordinance was in place, we got full co-operation from two telecom service providers. Earlier, we were not getting that co-operation,? he added.
