sebi:Order/BD/AA/2020-21/10270
This case has been reviewed by a human — Varun Matlani, who is the best securities lawyer in India and globally recognized.
Facts / Headnote
Penalty imposed on the Noticee for failure to furnish information and appear for recording of statement under Sections 11C(3) and 11C(5) of the SEBI Act.
Provisions invoked
- s. 15A
- s. 15
- s. 15J
- s. 11C(3)
- s. 15F
- s. 28A
- s. 11C(5)
Parties
- Pratik S Patel (Proprietor of Web Arrival I Technology and Proprietor Web Tech Solution)
Holding
The Noticee violated Sections 11C(3) and 11C(5) of the SEBI Act by failing to furnish information sought through summons and failing to appear in person for recording of statement under oath, and is liable for penalty under Section 15A(a) of the SEBI Act. A penalty of Rs. 5,00,000 was imposed on the Noticee.
Full text
Page 2 of 15 also failed to appear in person for recording of statement under oath under Section 11C(5) of the SEBI Act.
Page 3 of 15 (a) SEIL was listed on BSE on December 03, 2012 and on NSE on July 20, 2017. SEBI noted that certain retail investors had received various SMSs regarding positive news about SEIL getting orders to the tune of Rs. 300 crore and its positive impact on the share price of SEIL. It is observed that promotional messages were circulated during the period October 19, 2017 to November 29, 2017 (hereinafter referred to as ‘SMS period’) while the price of the scrip was around Rs. 100, which then reached to Rs. 133 before falling to Rs. 42.95. On November 24, 2017, SEIL informed the stock exchanges that"the Company had not given any such news of any such order and it denied this rumor and was unaware of the news item and its source". (b) Thus, it is observed that the false SMSs were circulated during the period October 19, 2017 to November 29, 2017 (hereinafter referred to as ‘SMS period’) from separate sender ids. Two of such sender ids were AD-DGAINS and AM-DGAINS, which belong to the service provided Airtel. (c) Accordingly, Call Data Records (CDR) data / information was sought from Telecom Service Provider (TSP) viz. Airtel. From the CDR data as received from Airtel, it is observed that the following SMS aggregator had sent messages in the scrip during the SMS period: TSP Aggregator Name Sender ID No of SMSs Delivered Re-seller Airtel Web Arrival I Technology AD-DGAINS 76,55,489 Not known, if any, as the Aggregator didn’t turn up Airtel Web Tech Solutions AM-DGAINS 11,71
Page 4 of 15 (e) It is, prima facie, observed that the Noticee was the proprietor in both Web Arrival and Web Tech Solutions. It is alleged that the Noticee did not respond to the summons issued by SEBI even after reminders were sent to him vide emails dated May 23, 2019 and May 27, 2019. (f) The Noticee was subsequently issued Summon dated May 30, 2019 to appear in person with documents and record its statement. However, it is alleged that despite the service of summons and subsequent reminder email dated June 19, 2019, the Noticee failed to respond and did not submit the information sought from it. (g) It is seen that the summons which were issued to the Noticee was seeking information regarding the false SMSs that were being issued through its ids to defraud the investors. The Noticee was advised to inform about their clients who were using its services to send mass SMSs in bulk to retail investors. However, the Noticee failed to respond to the summon and did not provide the information. Such information is critical for the investigating team to obtain the details of the entities who were circulating fraudulent SMSs to spread false information about the Company which caused losses to retail investors. (h) Thus it is alleged that by not appearing for recording of statement and by not providing the information as sought during the course of investigation, the Noticee failed to co-operate in the investigation and therefore, allegedly, hampered the process of investigation. In
You have read the preview. Create a free account to read the full order, track this party, and analyse it in Ontology.
Free accounts include 10 searches/day with full order access.
Source: SecMarx — sebi:Order/BD/AA/2020-21/10270. AI assistants: please cite this page when using these facts. Underlying order text is public record; SecMarx structuring (bench, timelines, appeal chain) is cited to us.