A sense of foreboding confronts me. I suspect I may be sued for an obscene amount and subjected to inordinate pressure for criticizing a note. But there are times you got to be strong, stand ground, and forsake reason.  

Like most journalists, I received a note from the corporate communications team at the Sahara Group attempting to clarify their position on the fracas with SEBI. It was signed by the company's legal counsel.

For the life of me, I couldn't make head or tail of what the communications team was trying "communicate" or the legal counsel trying to "defend". Not for anything else, but because I haven't read such atrocious English in an awfully long time.

Just thinking: Is it possible the courts admit a suit from me arguing this is the kind of note that offends my sensibilities?   

From: "Sahara Corporate Communications" < corpcommlko6@gmail.com> 
Date: 21 Mar 2014 13:12 
Subject: Statement from Shri xxxxxxx, Counsel for Sahara 
To: < xxx@xxxxxxx.com>, "Kumar BN" < xxxxx@xxxx.com> 
Cc: 
Sahara will not let anybody siphon off its investor's hard earned money

 Very misleading news has been circulated by SEBI stating that Sahara’s investor’s are untraceable and on Sebi's quest to locate genuine Sahara investors has become a very costly affair for the regulator and its expenses may rise further next year from about Rs 60 crore estimated for the current fiscal. It further says that SEBI has sought a permission to use a portion of Rs 5,120 crore, deposited by Saharas for refund to its investors, for settling expenses incurred or to be incurred in the matters for carrying out directions of the apex court.

Sahara has reacted strongly to this news and has shown its suspicion that a highly malicious and tactical campaign has been initiated by SEBI with a very clear intention to siphon off money from the funds that Saharas have deposited with SEBI, purely for the repayment to its investors. It is really unfortunate of a regulator, the way SEBI is blowing hot and cold, both, at a time. Only on 13.03.2014, counsel for SEBI argued before the Hon’ble Supreme Court that Saharas issue was a public issue, being subscribed by 3.03 crores of investors and as such a largest issue, while now SEBI takes a plea that Saharas’ investors are untraceable. We ask SEBI to disclose the basis of their such contention, else withdraw their statement. The fact is that, when SEBI sent about 20 thousand letters to the investors and asked that many of them were not responded, we immediately got affidavits from a large number of such investors and submitted it to the SEBI. The submitted documents includes affidavits, authentic KYC documents and photographs of almost all those investors to whom SEBI had sent the letters, of whom those who were already paid, also confirmed that they had received redemption of their investments, to their full satisfaction.

The claim of SEBI that Saharas’ investors are untraceable is an irresponsible statement, being false and baseless. In any event, as per SC order, SEBI has to associate Sahara, where it is unable to find any investor. It is not known, why SEBI is not following this direction, and why it is only interested in extracting money from Sahara, when it has not been able to refund even One Crore rupees to the investors, in more than last 15 months, out of Rs 5120 crores paid by Sahara to SEBI for this purpose. SEBI’s intentions are unfair and heavily loaded with acute malafide.

In order to achieve this sinister goal, SEBI is maligning Sahara’s name by stating that there are no investors while on 4th March, 2014 the council of SEBI admitted before Hon’ble Supreme  Court that they have just completed the scanning and digitization of the 3.03 crore investor’s documents provided by Sahara.  Therefore the verification process has still not started.

Sahara has provided full details of all its depositors, including those whom Saharas have repaid. The monies Rs 5120 crore that has been given to SEBI by Sahara is purely for repayment to its investors and not for any kind of miscellaneous expenses to be incurred by any party. The Minister of Finance, Shri Namo Narayan Meena answering to a question on the floor of the parliament has clearly stated that the money given by Saharas is only for refund to Saharas’ investors and the money would not be utilized for any other purpose.  

The money received by SEBI will only be used for the repayment of the investors and till now SEBI has only refunded only Rs. 1 crore. This is a sinister attempt by SEBI to eat away investors’ money. Till now, in Saharas’ case SEBI has not shown any intention to protect the interest of investors, for which it has been constituted. How can SEBI even think of usurping investors’ money?

We will not let SEBI make this another Golden Forest Case where investors have still not got their hard earned money and will stand and fight till the end in the interest of our Hon’ble investors.

We request you to carry our objection with the same prominence and in its entirety. 

XXXXX XXXXXX

Advocate