On Tuesday, September 20 NDTV (New Delhi Television Limited) said in a regulatory filing that founders Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy and their investment company RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd have moved the Supreme Court against the July 2022 order of the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT).
The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), in its order dated July 20 2022 asked the founders to pay Rs 5 crore and the company Rs 10 lakh as penalty for alleged non-disclosure of loan agreements in 2009-10.
On 14th June 2019 Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said in a statement that it had received certain complaints alleging that RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd and NDTV promoters Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy have violated the provisions of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act 1992 and the rules and regulations made thereunder.
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Indian Capital Markets Regulator SEBI, in an order passed on June 14, 2019, prohibited the promoters from being directly or indirectly associated with the securities market for two years and the existing holdings including units of mutual funds were frozen with immediate effect.
Taking the complaints under scrutiny, SEBI examined the period from 14 October 2008 to 22 November 2017 in which it was found that the company had taken a loan from ICICI Bank to repay the existing loan. To repay the loan of ICICI Bank, in 2009, the company again took a loan of Rs 403 crore from VCPL (Vishwapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd) for a period of 10 years, as revealed by the SEBI investigation.
The company had an interest of 19% per annum on the loan of ICICI Bank but there was no interest on the loan received from VCPL (Vishwapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd).
As per the loan agreement, RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd, which holds a 29.18% stake in NDTV, had given convertible warrants to VCPL (Vishwapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd) as collateral, which were convertible into equity shares totaling 99.99% of the share capital of RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd, revealed by further investigation. The company was to repay this loan to VCPL (Vishwapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd) in 2019 but they had not repaid this loan till now.
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The penalty was imposed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in connection with the alleged non-disclosure of loan agreements entered into by the promoters and RRPR Holding Ltd with Vishwapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd and ICICI Bank.
Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in its order dated 24 December 2020 imposed a penalty of Rs 25 crore on the founders and the promoter group company and in its order dated 29 December 2020 imposed a penalty of Rs 5 crore on the company for alleged non-disclosure of loan agreements.
But the order was challenged in the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) where the SAT judgment and other strong observations in favor of the founders of NDTV overturned SEBI’s earlier order. The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) reduced the promoters’ penalty from Rs 25 crore to Rs 5 crore and the company’s penalty from Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 lakh.
On 20 September 2022, NDTV (New Delhi Television Limited) said that “the founders Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy and RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd have filed a civil appeal in the Hon’ble Supreme Court against the order of the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT)”.
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