Refund Rs 49K cr to investors, SAT tells realty major PACL
Mumbai
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) on Monday upheld an order by market regulator Sebi against Jaipurbased real estate major PACL Ltd and directed it to refund `49,100 crore that the company had collected through what the tribunal termed as `sham collective investment scheme (CIS)'. This was the largest CIS in the country so far -in terms of money collected as well as the number of inves tors involved -against which Sebi had passed an order.
Exactly a year ago, Sebi had ordered PACL to wind up its illegal CIS and refund all the money it had collected from investors within three months.Subsequently PACL had challenged Sebi's order in SAT.
According to the Sebi order, PACL was running a land purchase scheme, collecting money from investors by promising that the investments in the company's schemes were highly profit able. Sebi had found out that through its unauthorized CIS that was running for 15 years, PACL had collected `49,100 crore from 5.85 crore investors.Of these many customers, PACL had issued sale deeds to only 19,284 investors.
The SAT order also noted that although PACL had collected `49,100 crore, the total value of the lands that PACL held in the form of stock in trade was `11,707 crore.
