Sebi asks 5 entities to pay Rs 130 cr in Reliance Home fund diversion case

Sebi on Monday asked five entities, including Netizen Engineering and Citi Securities and Financial Services, to pay Rs 130 crore for the illegal diversion of funds from Reliance Home Finance Ltd.

The regulator has warned these entities to attach assets and bank accounts if they fail to make the payment within 15 days.

Those who have sent notices are Netizen Engineering Pvt Ltd, Gamesa Investment Management Pvt Ltd, Vinayak Ventures Pvt Ltd, Deep Industrial Finance Ltd and Citi Securities and Financial Services Pvt Ltd.

The demand notices came after these entities failed to pay the fine imposed on them by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in August.

 

In five separate notices, the markets watchdog directed these five entities to pay Rs 26 crore each which includes interest and recovery costs within 15 days.

In the event of non-payment of dues, the market regulator will recover the amount by attaching and selling the moveable and immovable property of these entities. Besides, they will face attachment of their bank accounts.

In August this year, Sebi barred industrialist Anil Ambani, and 24 other entities, including former key officials of Reliance Home Finance from the securities market for five years for diversion of funds from the company.

Sebi has imposed a penalty of Rs 25 crore on Ambani and restrained him from being associated with the securities market including as a director or Key Managerial Personnel (KMP) in any listed company, or any intermediary registered with the market regulator, for a period of 5 years.

Also, the regulator barred RHFL from the securities market for six months and slapped a fine of Rs 6 lakh on it.

In its 222-page final order, Sebi found that Anil Ambani, with the help of RHFL's key managerial personnel, had orchestrated a fraudulent scheme to siphon-off funds from Reliance Home Finance Ltd (RHFL) by disguising them as loans to entities linked to him.

Although, the board of directors of RHFL had issued strong directives to stop such lending practices and reviewed corporate loans regularly, 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.

Further, the remaining entities have played the role of being either recipients of illegally obtained loans or conduits to enable illegal diversion of monies from RHFL.

The 24 restrained entities include former key officials of RHFL -- Amit Bapna, Ravindra Sudhalkar and Pinkesh R Shah -- and Sebi has imposed fine on them for their role in the case.

Also, the regulator levied a fine of Rs 25 crore on Ambani, Rs 27 crore on Bapna, Rs 26 crore on Sudhalkar and Rs 21 crore on Shah.

Additionally, the remaining entities including Reliance Unicorn Enterprises, Reliance Exchange next, Reliance Commercial Finance, Reliance Cleangen, Reliance Business Broadcast News Holdings and Reliance Big Entertainment have been imposed a penalty of Rs 25 crore each.

Last week, Sebi sent demand notices to six entities, including Reliance Home Finance's promoter entity and asked them to pay Rs 154.50 crore for diversion of funds from the company.

Those who have been sent notices were Crest Logistics and Engineers (now known as CLE Pvt Ltd), Reliance Unicorn Enterprises, Reliance Exchange next, Reliance Commercial Finance, Reliance Business Broadcast News Holdings and Reliance Cleangen.

In February 2022, markets watchdog Sebi had passed an interim order and restrained Reliance Home Finance Ltd, industrialist Anil Ambani and three other individuals (Amit Bapna, Ravindra Sudhakar and Pinkesh R Shah) from the securities market till further orders for allegedly siphoning off funds from the company.