A court in the financial center of India Mumbai ordered an investigation into the accusations of fraud in the stock market by the former main market regulator, officials and local media said on Sunday.
The Anti -Corruption Office was ordered to begin an investigation against the former president of the Securities Board and Exchange of India (Sebi), Madhabi Puri Buch and five other officials “in relation to the alleged regulatory violations of the stock market,” said the press agency of Press Trust of India (PTI).
The court said that the inaction of Sebi and other agencies of application of the law made it necessary for judicial intervention, according to the PTI report.
In a statement, Sebi said that the “miscellaneous application” before the Court alleged irregularities on the list of a company in the Bombay Stock Exchange, the main stock market in India.
Sebi said that “it would initiate the appropriate legal steps to challenge this order and remain committed to guaranteeing due compliance in all matters.” He said that Buch and the other officials “did not occupy their respective positions at the relevant point of time” and that he was not given the opportunity to “place registered facts.”
It is not the first time that Buch, who has just finished his term as Chief of Sebi last week, has been under the lens.
Last year, Hindenburg’s investigation, based in the United States, said that investments on the high seas in Bucho by Buch have prevented him from properly investigating the accusations of corporate embezzlement against the Indian conglomerate Adani Group.
Hindenburg accused Buch and her husband of having maintained investments in funds on the high seas that a member of the Adani family also used. He suggested that the regulator could have been “reluctant to follow a path that may have taken its own president.”
Buch rejected the accusations as “without foundation”, but the critics requested their resignation.
Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress Party had said that the Securities Regulator had been “severely committed” and requested his resignation, as well as a joint parliamentary investigation.
Adani Group, the firm Indian firm of ports to power, saw thousands of millions of dollars annihilated from its market value in 2023 after a Hindenburg report of bombs accused him of “shameless” corporate fraud.
