SC to hear SEBI's plea for appointing receiver of Sahara's assets

New Delhi, Jan 6: The Supreme Court will hear, on February 2, market regulator SEBI 's plea seeking appointment of a receiver for sale of Sahara group's assets for compliance of the apex court's August 2012 order to return investors' money that it had raised in 2008 and 2009.

A bench headed by Chief Justice T.S.Thakur directed the hearing of the application next month as senior counsel Arvind Datar, appearing for the Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), on Wednesday, urged the court to hear the plea.

He told the court that there was no progress in the direction of Sahara mobilising the funds to return the investors money raised through optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCD)as directed by the court.

Counsel appearing for Sahara however said that there was no urgency and they were negotiating with new prospective buyers.

At this the court observed that some directions are required to be passed on the matter.

The apex court on September 28 had asked Sahara to file its reply to SEBI's application seeking the appointment of a receiver to take over the charge of the entire assets of the group, located within and outside the country, sell the same and deposit the proceeds in SEBI's Sahara Refund Account.

The apex court by its August 31, 2012, order had asked Sahara to repay investors Rs.17,400 crore with an interest component of 15 percent. This amount, according to market regulator, coupled with interest component, has escalated to Rs.36,000 crores.

Coupled with the plea for the receiver's appointment, SEBI has also sought the refund of Rs.41 crore that it had spent in connection with the scanning, storage, handling and other incidental expenditure relating to investors documents.

It said that it has completed the scanning of the documents submitted by Sahara relating to the investors and urged the court to direct the group to either take back the documents or the charge of the storage where they are kept. It said that it was spending Rs.10 lakh per month for their storage.

IANS