FTIL case: Sebi disposes of show cause notices against 5 persons

Markets regulator Sebi today disposed of show cause notices issued against five individuals in the matter of Financial Technologies, now known as 63 Moons Technologies, as alleged violation of insider trading in the shares could not be established.
The five individuals are FTIL founder Jignesh Shah's brother Manish Shah and father Prakash Shah,
another FTIL employee V Arvindkumar Iyengar and his wife Dhanashri, and Bharat Kanaiyalal Sheth, brother of former FTIL director Ravi Sheth.
The move comes after Sebi in January had revoked interim orders against eight individuals, including these five, after alleged violation of some other provision of insider trading rules could not be proved.

It was alleged in the the show cause notice (SCN) that these individuals, being insiders, before the outbreak of NSEL irregularities, avoided losses by selling shares of FTIL while in possession of unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI) relating to NSEL and therefore violated provisions of insider trading norms.
NSEL had to suspend trading on July 31, 2013 after a major payment crisis broke out at the bourse. Subsequently, a number of regulators and enforcement agencies launched their probes into the case. The National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) was promoted by FTIL, which is now known as 63 Moons Technologies.

"I have also gone through the charges levelled against the noticee in the SCN which have arisen out of the same set of facts identical to that of in the WTM (whole time member) order and I do not find any reason to disagree with the view taken by the WTM about the periodicity of UPSI," Sebi Adjudicating Officer Prasanta Mahapatra said in five separate orders.

Sebi further said there was no UPSI in existence at the time of sale of FTIL's shares by these individuals between November 2012 and February 2013, therefore it concluded that violation of PIT (Prohibition of Insider Trading) regulations by them as alleged in show cause notices could not be established.
Accordingly, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has disposed of the show cause notices against these five individuals.
Through two separate orders in August 2017, Sebi had impounded Rs 125 crore through alleged insider trading in MCX and its erstwhile promoter FTIL by 13 persons, with 'prior information' about the NSEL case.