SEPTEMBER 9 SEBI frees 16 individuals including the former employees of Infosys in an insider trading freeze. The case was based on some anomalies that were detected in relation to Infosys share activity with respect to the company’s financial reports from December 2019 to September 2020.
SEBI had earlier passed orders on May 2021 wherein it putting restrictions on certain persons and entities to access the securities markets. Some of them were restricted including Pranshu Bhutra, Amit Bhutra, Bharath Jain and others. The examination also indicated that Insider trading rules had been transgressed with some persons allegedly being in possession of the unpublished price-sensitive information.
Most notably, it involved Amit Bhutra, the senior corporate counsel of the Infosys, and Venkata Subramaniam, the senior principal in the Infosys’ corporate accounting group. SEBI said that, Bhutra got hold of the information through communicating with Subramaniam and others and relayed to other parties.
But SEBI’s whole-time member Ashwani Bhatia held that such evidence had not been made out so as to substantiate the contention by SEBI that Subramaniam passed on any specific inside information to Bhutra. Further, the orders against other individuals included Pranshu Bhutra and Subramaniam were passed much earlier and have been already quashed by the SAT in April 2022.
From this ruling SEBI directed that any amount which was tendered from the Noticees 2 to 7 be released and thereafter, the case was closed without requiring further actions or imposing penalties on those parties.
Disclaimer:- This news article contains inputs from PTI.
