SEBI to get more teeth

The Central government has decided to increase the powers of SEBI to make it effective in dealing with fraudulent schemes of money-pooling and lending.
Under the new, Securities Laws Amendment Act,
• The capital market regulator can pass orders of arresting the defaulters, attaching the properties and can get access to all data records of such individuals or companies.
• The act empowers capital markets watchdog Sebi to take action against all unregulated money-pooling schemes involving Rs 100 crore or more.
• There will be special SEBI courts to speeden the investigation and trials in such matters.
• The law has 57 clauses to amend many sections of the existing and toothless SEBI Act.
This new Act is widely been welcomed due to springing up of the Ponzi schemes which have duped the investors in India.
SEBI Chief U K Sinha said that with the new powers it will become harder for offenders to evade law and prolong the cases registered for years making the legislation ineffective and toothless. The usual practice of ignoring SEBI orders will come to a stop and a big change will be seen in making the system more clean and corruption-free. The recovery and disgorgement powers will help in arranging refund of money to investors.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India which has been set up by the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992 works on the principle of protecting the interests of the investors and regulating the securities markets. It has various divisions and departments which carry out its work of the registration, supervision, compliance monitoring and inspections of all market intermediaries in respect of all segments of the markets viz. equity, equity derivatives, debt and debt related derivatives.
One scam which recently made headlines was the Saradha Scam in West Bengal.

Month: Current Affairs - August, 2014