Sebi to Empanel Agencies for Sale of Attached Assets

New Delhi: To help it recover penalties and investors' money from defaulters, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has decided to empanel third-party agencies to work as receivers for management and sale of assets attached through its regulatory orders.

Capital market watchdog Sebi is empowered to impose penalties, direct refund of monies collected fraudulently from investors, and also pass disgorgement orders against those violating securities laws.

Sebi has also been empowered to recover the penalties and the disgorged amounts if the concerned entities fail to pay.

One of the modes of recovery of dues by Sebi is through attachment and sale of the movable and immovable assets of the defaulters.

The assets may include land, building, plant, machinery, standing timber, livestock, etc., depending on the activities undertaken by the defaulters.

To help it in this process, the regulator has now decided to empanel "receivers for managing and liquidating the assets which are attached by Sebi" and has floated a tender to seek application from the interested agencies till September 15.

The panel will be valid for a period of five years from the date of empanelment.

In the past one year itself, Sebi had initiated 1,500 proceedings to recover close to Rs 1,600 crore.

The proposed work of managing and liquidating the assets would be spread across the country. The scope of work would include possession and control of the assets as directed by Sebi and prepare inventory of the assets, managing the assets attached by the regulator till its disposal and maintaining records of accounts of all transactions.

Among other works include obtaining 'fair price' of the properties through a Sebi or government approved valuer and finding out prospective buyers in appropriate cases.

The applicant seeking to work for empanelment as receiver should have a net worth of at least Rs 2 crore, a turnover of not less than Rs 10 crore for each of the last three financial years.

Besides, the applicant should have prior experience of handling similar activities for the last three years and is not prohibited from undertaking the proposed activities.

Interested agencies will have to submit a covering letter for Expression of Interest along with requisite documents and the audited balance sheet and income statement for last three financial years to Sebi.

Also, the applicant has to submit other details like name of the agency, nature of the business, contact details, PAN, regulatory actions, if any, pending/completed against the agency, details of prior experience in similar work and detailed profile of key management personnel among others.

Then, Evaluation Committee (EC) constituted for selection of agencies would examine the documents submitted by the applicants and will prepare a short list of applicants. The short-listed agencies would submit their technical and financial bids.