SEBI bars SVDPL, 10 directors from markets for 5 years

Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Wednesday barred Patna-based Shree Vaishnavi Dyeing and Printing Limited (SVDPL) and its ten directors from accessing capital markets for five years. SEBI directed SVDPL and "its directors - Vijay Kumar Agarwal, Sashikant Kanoria, Bhagwati Prasad Kanoria, Suresh Patel, Rajendra Kumar Kanoria, Brij Kumar Poddar, Ram Gopal Mundra, Zulfikar Ali Kagzi, Yakub K Mulla and Nizzamuddin J Saiyed - to dissociate themselves in every respect from the capital market related activities and not to access capital market for a period of five years." The SEBI order further said that the public companies in which the identified directors have controlling or substantial interest will not be allowed to raise funds from the capital markets for five years. The order of SEBI follows a probe on vanishing companies undertaken by the coordination and monitoring committee which was set up jointly by the department of company affairs and SEBI. The Patna-based SVDPL, which came out with a public issue of 32.4000000 equity shares of Rs 10 in 1994, was declared as "traceless" by the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Bihar and Jharkhand. As SVDPL had stopped filing statutory returns since March 31, 1997, the RoC filed prosecution proceedings under the Companies Act and FIR was filed against the company under various sections of the Indian Penal Code. SVDPL was identified as one of the vanishing companies in the eastern region by the coordination committee of the DCA and SEBI in 2003.