ADAG companies pay record Sebi settlement charge of Rs50 crore

The record high settlement of Rs50 crore collected by market regulator Sebi for dropping proceedings against Anil Ambani group exceeds its annual aggregate of such payments in a single year so far.

Sebi started the settlement of its pending enforcement actions with the consent procedure, which is a sort of an out-of-court settlement involving a payment of a settlement charge by the accused entities, in 2007.

Although the procedure has so far been used to settle around 1,000 cases, the settlement charges have never been anywhere near as high in any single case earlier.

With the consent order today, the two Anil Ambani group companies Reliance Infra and RNRL have collectively paid Rs50 crore, through their directors, for settling the charges.

This figure is about half of the total settlement charges collected by Sebi through consent orders in the past four years at an estimated Rs98 crore.

Sebi's 2007 settlement charges collection totaled only around Rs1.2 core from 21 entities through consent orders. In 2008, the total settlement charges were Rs30 crore collected from 371 entities.