 "Sebi")
Sebi on Friday barred Bullmatics Advisory and its directors from the securities market for six months for providing unauthorised investment advisory services and directed them to refund investors' money.
Bullmatics was engaged in investment advisory services without obtaining Sebi registration as an investment adviser.
The company's directors -- Triloki Nath Verma and Ajitesh Kumar -- who conduct the business were responsible for its activities.
Through such acts, they violated the provisions of Investment Adviser (IA) norms, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in its final order.
The regulator noted that entities have collected Rs 1.7 crore through investment advisory services.
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In the order, Sebi has directed the entities, within a period of three months, to refund the money received from the investors as fees in respect of their unregistered investment advisory activities.
Also, they have been prohibited from accessing as well as dealing in the securities market directly or indirectly in any manner for a period of six months or till the expiry of six months from the date of completion of refunds to investors, whichever is later.
The order will come into force immediately. However, in view of exceptional circumstances due to COVID and consequential restrictions imposed in different parts of the country, the directions related to refund will come into force from February 28, Sebi said.
Meanwhile, in seven separate orders, the regulator levied a fine totalling Rs 35 lakh on seven entities, including individuals, for indulging in non-genuine trades in illiquid stock options on the BSE.
It imposed a penalty of Rs 5 lakh each on Minal Aggarwal, Bineet Agarwal, Nisha Balasiya, Santosh Kumar Saraf HUF, Kashni Gupta, Navneet Kothari HUF and Rajeev Gupta HUF.
The entities indulged in execution of reversal trades in stock options contracts, during April 2014 to September 2015, which were non-genuine and created false and misleading appearance of trading in terms of artificial volumes in stock options, leading to violation of the PFUTP (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices) rules, Sebi noted.
Sebi, through a separate order, imposed a penalty of Rs 10 lakh on Three C Green Developers for violating provisions of LODR (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) rules.
In another order, the regulator has imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Sharekhan Ltd for indulging in fraudulent trading in the shares of Sampada Chemicals.
"Noticee (Sharekhan) has manipulated the price of the Sampada scrip and created a misleading appearance of trading in the scrip to induce innocent investors in the securities market thereby contravening the provisions of... the PFUTP Regulation," Sebi said.
The regulator conducted an investigation in the scrip of Sampada Chemicals for the period October 2010 to March 2011 to ascertain whether there was any violation of the provisions of the regulatory norms.
Separately, Sebi has slapped a fine totalling Rs 5 lakh on six entities in a case pertaining to price manipulation in the share of Nouveau Global Ventures Ltd.
The regulator had conducted investigation during the period from December 2010 to March 2013 in the scrip of Nouveau to ascertain whether there was any price manipulation while trading by certain suspected entities in the scrip resulting in violation of PFUTP rules.
In the same case, Sebi separately imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh on Vazhacholil Paul Xavier for violating PFUTP rules.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
