INDIA. Mumbai: While over 5.50 crore investors duped by the Pearls Agrotech Corporation Limited (PACL) await the refund of their money, the Justice (Retd) R. M. Lodha Committee set up by the SEBI under the Supreme Court’s directions, has to date refunded Rs. 919.91 crore to 19,61,690 investors.
As per the public notice issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on May 8, Rs 85.68 crore was refunded to 1,14,933 eligible investors with a principal amount between Rs. 15,000/ to Rs. 17,000/-. Similarly, Rs. 2.45 crore was refunded to 3,747 investors with an outstanding principal amount of up to Rs. 15,000/-. These investors were allowed to resubmit their applications between November 1, 2022, and January 31, since the original applications they submitted were deficient, and they were allowed to make good on the deficiencies.
The Committee has advised the investors that the last submission date for original PACL certificates has expired. As such, they should wait to send their original PACL certificates until further instructions.
As per its recent status report, the Lodha Committee sold 113 attached properties of PACL (out of 27,133 properties across the country) for Rs 89 crore in the second auction. It has asked revenue authorities to refrain from allowing the transfer, mutation, and registration of PACL properties notified for sale by public auction since it would violate the SC directions. Through recovery proceedings, the Committee also recovered Rs 59.92 crore from PACL and its directors until July 27, 2022.
In another development, two associates of PACL arrested in connection with a multi-crore rupee fraud were recently granted bail by the courts. In the first case, a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justice P S Narasimha, and J B Pardiwala granted six-week interim bail to PACL Director Gurmeet Singh on May 8.
Gurmeet Singh, who was in jail for over seven years, was granted bail on the condition that he marks his presence at the local police station on Monday of every week during the bail period. His passport, which is already in the custody of the CBI Court, shall continue to remain in the CBI court. The CBI had opposed Gurmeet Singh’s bail.
Another accused, Chandra Prakash Khandelwal, who was booked on charges of money laundering, was granted bail by Justice Yogesh Khanna at the Delhi High Court on the ground that money transactions alleged to be the money laundering offence were not being identified by the Central Bureau of Investigation during its probe into the predicate offence. The court also observed that the main accused of the crime was either granted bail or not arrested.
Besides, the Enforcement Directorate did not accuse several entities and individuals, who were the alleged intermediary layers between PACL and Khandelwal and were direct recipients of PACL funds.
Khandel was arrested on June 22, 2022, and the transactions complained of against him date back to 2012. Admittedly, the court observed that he was not an accused in the predicated chargesheet filed by the CBI, nor was he shown as an accused in its supplementary chargesheet.
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