Sebi imposes Rs 1.75 lakh fine on Galaxy Broking

Sebi has imposed a penalty of Rs 1.7500000 on Galaxy Broking Limited on charges of aiding and abetting its clients in fraudulent dealings in shares of T Spiritual World Limited (TSWL), by seeking to create artificial volumes and influencing the stock price.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) passed the order, dated September 4, after a probe into the share dealings of TSWL for a period from July 12, 2004 to February 2005 -- during which its share price fell from Rs 27.85 to Rs 5.06.A total of 2,07,94,921 shares got traded in 130 trading days with an average daily volume of 1,59,961 shares in this period.The probe found that a group of entities connected to each other and to TSWL had dealt in the stock in a fraudulent and manipulative manner during the investigation period, by creating artificial volume, false and misleading appearance of trading and price manipulation.It was further found that Galaxy Broking Limited aided and abetted three of the entities in executing trades in the scrip as a broker and had allegedly failed to maintain complete and proper Know Your Client (KYC) forms of its clients.Sebi further found that the broking firm had placed large orders in the scrip for a quantity during the investigation period. Out of the total 48 such large buy orders and 21 large sell orders placed in the scrip, Galaxy Broking accounted for 40 buy orders and 7 sell orders, respectively.The said buy orders were placed at rates which were marginally lower than the prevailing market price.Further, most of such large buy orders were deleted by the broker at a later stage and only two% of the total large orders placed by it got executed.The broker deleted most of the large buy orders from the system after keeping them exposed for some time and the orders were generally placed at prices lower than prevailing market price, making it clear that the same was done to avoid buy orders getting executed, Sebi said.The regulator said the entity had also influenced the price by placing buy orders at higher price in the scrip for its client, Vintel securities Private Limited while it also did not maintain proper KYC forms of its clients.