The Madras High Court bench on Wednesday admitted a petition seeking a probe by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office and the CBI into the merger of Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) with Reliance Power (R-Power) alleging it caused a loss of Rs 2105.87 crore to shareholders.
Justice R S Ramanathan ordered issuing notices to SFIO and CBI and posted the case for hearing on June 25.
The petitioner submitted that 1.97 crore investors bought RNRL company shares after the company signed gas supply master agreement with Reliance Industries. The closing price of a RNRL share on July 2, 2010, was Rs 62.95.
The same day the announcement came that RNRL would be merged with R-Power. The value of RNRL and R-Power shares stood at 2.7:1 on July 2, 2010. The share swap ratio was fixed at 4:1 for the merger.
The merger plan brought down the share value of RNRL from Rs 63.95 to Rs 45.20, the petition said. It alleged that investors were defrauded to the tune of Rs 2,105.87 crore. The petitioner said he himself had lost Rs 18,000.
Markets regulator Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) failed to protect the interest of investors, it alleged.
The petitioner alleged that the share swap ratio fixed by the company caused heavy loss to investors.
This should be investigated by the SFIO and CBI, he said.
Both the agencies had said since the matter was being looked into by SEBI and they had no role.
SEBI in turn said that complaint did not come under its purview and it was the duty of the SFIO to investigate as SFIO was specially constituted to curb economic frauds.
The petitioner sought a direction to SFIO and CBI to probe his complaint. PTI
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