SMALL INVESTORS FORUM

 Lessons from the plantations disaster The plantation companies scam hit the nation in late 1990's and once again our regulatory agencies were found napping and gullible Investors lost crores of rupees. What was the lure? What, after all, do they have?  Some land with some teak saplings still far from revenue-generating stage.  Their assets would never add up to more than a fraction of what they owe investors.  Indeed, many of these companies have closed shop and slunk away into the night. Many promoters are absconding. The plantation scheme story has all the attributes of the classic financial disaster: greed, dishonesty, incompetence, collapse, panic, late reaction from the authorities. HOW THEY DUPED YOU We all know about these schemes. They offered investors teak saplings, promising them a certain amount of teak after 20 to 30 years. The companies said they would sell the teak and give investors the money at the end of the maturity period.  The yearly return...

The NSEL scam had hit the financial community hard and raised questions on the governance of exchanges and brokers and the concept of a commodity exchange itself. The newspaper headlines then were mostly relating to NSEL scam and it's estimated scale of Rs. 4,000 crores to Rs. 6,000 crores.  Many people who invested in e-gold, e-silver and ETF's are worried about their hard earned money and what will happen to it. Even those who trade in the commodities market are fearing a shut down. So what is the NSEL scam all about? NSEL stands for National Spot Exchange Limited and is owned by Financial Technologies which also owns the MCX. NSEL was operating unregulated as it didn't come under the scrutiny of the Forwards Market Commission (FMC) because of it being a Spot market. The whole fiasco was on the trading of Agri-Commodity products on NSEL. Contracts of T+2, T+3,... T+35 were launched when as per laws a spot exchange cannot launch contracts having settlement greater than T+1...

 The Karvy Scam The story so far: On November 22, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) passed an ex parte ad interim order against Karvy Stock Broking, a Hyderabad-based firm, prohibiting it from taking new clients in respect of its stock broking activities. In view of the recent developments in the securities market, the National Stock Exchange issued an 11-point advisory to investors on how to keep stocks safe. How many customers does Karvy have? Karvy Stock Broking has more than a million retail broking customers and executes over two lakh transactions almost daily on behalf of its clients. The broking firm has been in the news for the last few weeks as some of its clients complained of delayed payouts. Typically, a person should get the money in his account on the third day of the transaction but some clients alleged that they did not receive the money after more than a week of executing the trades. Why was the payout delayed? The broking firm had initially said th...

  C R Bhansali’s web of deceit was elaborate. He had floated 133 companies to pull in funds and suck them out. Money came easy; he was inspiring with his grandiose plans, high interest rates and entry into mutual fund and banking. CRB’s meteoric rise in the early 90s coincided with the boom in the Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) sector. His fall in 1996 was equally fast. Forget investors, even credit-rating agencies didn’t see it coming. CARE, a leading agency, gave ‘AAA’ rating at a time when the company was going down. How to become chairman of top 3 finance companies Born in Rajasthan, raised in Kolkata, Bhansali became a dada in the financial capital — Mumbai — before he turned 40. First came the finance company (CRB Capital Markets), after which the mutual fund (CRB Mutual Fund) and CRB Share Custodial Services followed. Then he planned to get into banking, and he almost made it. He had a dream run from 1992 to 1996 collecting money from the public through fixed deposits, b...

 1. Vanishing Companies of 1998: It was an unusual year when over 600 companies vanished from the stock markets after raising money. The scam estimated to be worth Rs 800 crore came to light when Sebi was probing few companies which disappeared after raising money from the stock markets. In May 1998, it named 80 companies that had raised over Rs 330 crore. Later, it was found out that over 600 companies were under scrutiny. A Committee was set up to investigate which officially identified 238 listed companies, out of which 161 could be traced and 77 are still  in the list of vanishing companies. 2. Ketan Parekh Scam: The securities scam of 2001 that was estimated to be worth over Rs 1200 crore involved investor Ketan Parekh siphoning off a huge sum of money from the banks to invest in the market. The money was diverted to Parekh and his friends to either invest in the markets or pay up their dues. A joint-parliamentary committee in 2005 stated that Parekh received large sums o...

 *The GST compensation mess*: On Dassera day, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray stirred a hornets nest by alleging that the Centre was not paying ₹ 38,000 Cr of GST compensation the Centre owes Maharashtra. Under the GST (Compensation to States) Act, states are assured compensation for the gap between revenues at a compounded growth rate of 14 per cent over the base year revenue of 2015-16 and the actual revenues from GST for five years ending June 2022 through levy of cess on demerit and sin goods. The story so far: The 41st meeting of the GST Council was held on August 27 with the singular agenda of finding a solution to the question of how best to ensure that the compensation payable to the States as part of the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax continues to be paid.  The background for the meeting was the fact that the Centre and the States were cognisant of the substantial impact on GST collections from the last fiscal year’s economic slowdown and more recently t...

 

 Pancard Clubs case: SEBI orders attachment of assets to recover dues worth Rs 7,000 crore Sebi on April 16, 2018, ordered attachment of properties, luxury cars, gold and jewellery of Pancard Clubs and its directors to recover dues worth Rs 7,035 crore. Markets regulator Sebi ordered attachment of properties, luxury cars, gold and jewellery of Pancard Clubs and its directors to recover dues worth Rs 7,035 crore in a case related to illegal fund raising. In December 2016 Sebi had attached bank and demat accounts of the company and its six directors. Subsequently, it had ordered several immovable properties. It has already auctioned several properties of the company in the last four months. In the latest order Sebi has said that the funds available in bank accounts, securities available in the demat accounts and the assets of the defaulters already attached may not be sufficient towards the dues. It is noted that the value of assets of PCL and its directors estimated by the defaulter...

  1] In nutshell, the facts of the complainants case are as under:- The complainants are residing at above stated address. While the opponent PancardClubs Ltd., company is incorporated under Central Government Registration No.11/105363. The opponent No.1 to 5 are Chairman and Directors of the said company. The complainant invested money in the above company by way of booking room night.  The main office of the company is at KalidasUdyog Mumbai Bhavan,Near Century Bazaar, Prabhadevi,   Mumbai-400 025   and one of its branch office located at Alankar Tower,Sayajigunj, Vadodara, Gujarat.  The complainant invested money in the opponent company as per certificate issued by the company.  After expiry of date of certificate, the complainant surrendered his original certificate to Vadodara branch office of the company but opponent company did not make the payment till date, therefore, the complainants are suffering badly from economic crisis and felt that his hard ...

The Bombay High Court in an interim order on January 2, 2019 restrained the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) from auctioning off private properties of the Pancard Clubs, a company.  A bench of justices B P Dharmadhikari and Revati Mohite-Dere also directed the SEBI to file its reply to a petition filed by the Pancard Clubs alleging that the market regulator had undervalued its assets while fixing their reserved price for the auction.  The SEBI initiated the auction after Pancard Clubs, a company that develops and maintains recreational clubs and hotels across the country, failed to comply with SEBI's 2016 order directing it to refund investors' over Rs 7,000 crore of money.  As per the SEBI, the company had collected over Rs 7,000 crore from 51,55,516 investors through illegal collective investment schemes between 2002-03 and 2013-14.  Last year, the SEBI put up the company's private properties for sale through an e-auction to recover the investors' mone...

 पॅनकार्ड क्लब घोटाळा : सेबीला मुंबई उच्च न्यायालयाचा दणका ( जानेवारी २०१९) 7 हजार कोटींच्या या घोटाळ्यात आतापर्यंत जप्त केलेल्या मालमत्तेची यादी न्यायालयात सादर करण्याचे आदेश देत पुढील आदेश येईपर्यंत मालमत्तेच्या लिलावावर स्थगिती दिली आहे. सेबीने आतापर्यंत जप्त केलेल्या 15 मालमत्तांचा लिलाव केला असून अजूनही 53 मालमत्तांचा लिलाव बाकी आहे. गुंतवणुकीवरील आकर्षक परताव्यासह आलिशान हॉटेलमधील खान-पानासह निवासाचीही सुविधा देणाऱ्या पॅनकार्ड क्लब घोटाळ्याप्रकरणी मुंबई उच्च न्यायालयाने सेबीला दणका दिला आहे. 7 हजार कोटींच्या या घोटाळ्यात आतापर्यंत जप्त केलेल्या मालमत्तेची यादी न्यायालयात सादर करण्याचे आदेश देत पुढील आदेश येईपर्यंत मालमत्तेच्या लिलावावर स्थगिती दिली आहे. सेबीने आतापर्यंत जप्त केलेल्या 15 मालमत्तांचा लिलाव केला असून अजूनही 53 मालमत्तांचा लिलाव बाकी आहे. या पॅनकार्ड क्लब लिमिटेडच्या एकूण 68 मालमत्तांपैकी काही मालमत्ता परदेशातही असल्याची माहिती आहे. पॅनकार्ड क्लब लिमिटेड ही मुंबई शेअर बाजारातील पॅनारॉमिक समुहाची एक कंपनी आहे. या कंपनीच्या संचालकांनी देशभरात आपली हॉटेल्स आणि रिसॉर...