Sahara chief Subrata Roy appears before SEBI

Sahara group chief Subrata Roy and three other top executives appeared before market regulator SEBI, on Wednesday, which had summoned them in the high-profile case involving refund of an estimated Rs 24,000 crore to over three crore investors. Mr Roy, along with Ashok Roy Choudhary, Ravi Shankar Dubey and Vandana Bhargava, were asked to come for personal appearance before SEBI's whole-time member Prashant Saran at the market regulator's headquarters here. The summons for the four persons, as directors of two Sahara firms, were issued by SEBI on March 26, to examine them for ascertaining details of their personal assets, as also the investments and assets of the companies, to move ahead with sale of immovable assets for realisation of money to be refunded to the investors. During their personal appearance, they have been asked to produce original title deeds of all assets and investments of the two firms, Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL). The two Sahara firms, SIRECL and SHCIL, have been asked by the Supreme Court to refund over Rs 24,000 crore to their bondholders within three months. In this apex court order dated August 31, 2012, SEBI was asked to facilitate the refund after verifying genuineness of investors. Later on December 5, 2012, the court gave additional time to Sahara group and asked it to make an immediate payment of Rs 5,120 crore, followed by Rs 10,000 crore by the first week of January and the remainder by the first week of February. Sahara chief said SEBI's questions were limited to his personal assets and the regulator was not taking any steps for returning investors' money from Rs 5,120 crore submitted by the group to SEBI. The group claims that it has already returned a bulk of the total Rs 24,000 crore refund to investors directly and the total outstanding liability was less than Rs 5,120 crore given to Sebi towards investor refund. After Supreme Court said that the market regulator was free to freeze accounts and attach properties if Sahara group firms were not depositing the money with it for refund to investors, SEBIon February 13, 2013 ordered freezing of accounts and attachment of assets. As per SEBI, the SIRECL and SHCIL had raised Rs 6,380 crore and Rs 19,400 crore respectively from bond holders and"various illegalities" were committed in raising these funds.