The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is eager to remove the burden of the truckloads of investor database that Sahara has given on a Supreme Court order. The market regulator has thus floated a multi-crore tender, under which it has invited registry and transfer agents (RTAs) who can handle data processing work for an estimated 300 million application forms of nearly 30 million beneficiaries. The cost of such a project, say industry sources, could come to around Rs 100 crore.
Though the Sebi has not mentioned in the tender offer that the work is related to the controversial Sahara debenture issue, registry agents and regulatory officials say the tender is mainly for data processing work of the Lucknow-based company. Sahara had raised nearly Rs 24,000 crore through optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs) from 30 million investors in the country. The issue ran into controversy, leading the Supreme Court to order the refund of the entire money to investors, with 15 per cent interest.
Sahara had to deposit this money with the Sebi, which in turn was supposed to refund the entire sum of Rs 24,000 crore to investors. The court asked Sahara to furnish the estimated 30 million investors’ database to the Sebi. Following this, Sahara on September 12 sent two truckloads of documents to the Sebi headquarters in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex. The Sebi only partly accepted the documents and rejected a consignment that reached after the deadline.
Last Friday, the court asked the Sebi to deal with the issue on its terms but stressed the money should be returned to investors. Sebi officials say they will accept the documents and conduct proper due diligence and know-your-customer (KYC) of Sahara’s 30 million investors.
The Sebi had put out the tender on September 26 and the deal is likely to be finalised by the end of this month. The RTAs will submit their bids on Monday. The documents sent by Sahara are said to have details of investors, supporting redemption papers, application forms, allotment of bonds, and run into millions of pages. A part of the Sebi’s job is to ascertain how many of these investors were genuine so that dummy applications can be weeded out.
Though the Sebi has not mentioned any deadline by which the work has to be concluded, return of money to investors was to start in three months. The RTAs say the work would definitely take much more time than that.