Tribunal stays Sebi order on Shankar Sharma

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has stayed the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s order against Shankar Sharma,director of brokerage firm First Global. Admitting the appeal by Shankar Sharma,Justice N K Sodhi observed,“Operation of the impugned order should remain stayed during the pendency of appeal.” The case will come up for final hearing on April 13. On February 13, Sebi had issued an order banning Sharma from taking part in trading activities for one year for allegedly indulging in fictitious trading in some securities that led to a crash in 2001 on the Bombay Stock Exchange. “First Global Stock Broking manager and VCIP had indulged in large transactions in 10 securities (Global Telesystems,HFCL,DSQ Software,Zee Telefilms,Wipro,Satyam Computers,MTL,SBI,Infosys Technologies and Sterlite Opticals) in early 2001,” said an order issued by Sebi whole-time director MS Sahoo. “As these trades for Shankar Sharma in his proprietary account,as a client of Bang Equity on the one hand and the trades of VCIP which is 100% owned by Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra,as a client of FGSB,resulted in large-scale synchronization which resulted in creation of large artificial volume in those shares,I hold Shankar Sharma guilty for synchronizing the trades in violation of regulation 4 (b) (c) and (d) of PFUTP Regulations,1995,” Sahoo’s order said.