Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT): Justice Tarun Agarwala, Presiding Officer, Dr C.K.G. Nair Member and Justice M.T. Joshi, Judicial Member affirmed the impugned order and allowed the appeal partly.
The present appeal has been filed against the order dated August 31, 2020, passed by the Adjudicating Officer i.e. AO of Securities and Exchange Board of India i.e. SEBI imposing a penalty of Rs. 8 lakh for violation of Regulation 3 and 4 of SEBI (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices relating to Securities Market) Regulations, 2003 i.e. PFUTP Regulations.
A show-cause notice was issued in the trading of the scrip of Malabar Trading Company Ltd. i.e. ‘MTCL’. It was alleged that the appellant had contributed to more than 5% of the total market positive LTP through 63 trades for a total quantity of 4304 shares during patch-1. It was further alleged that the appellant placed sell orders in the range of 1 to 500 shares when the respective buy order quantity was in the range of 100 to 3400 shares especially when more shares were available, inspite of which the appellant on most of the dates traded only on one share. It was, thus, alleged that the appellant was manipulating the share price and created a misleading appearance of trading in the scrip by such trades thereby violating Regulation 3 and 4 of PFUTP Regulations. The AO found that the appellant had no bonafide intention to sell when sufficient buy orders were available and despite having adequate holdings in the scrip of MTCL sold only one share per transactions which resulted in the creation of positive LTP and thus created a false misleading appearance of trading in the securities market. The AO, thus, held that such trading pattern amounts to manipulation of the price of the scrip.
The Tribunal observed that except on three occasions the appellant only sold one share at a time on a daily basis. This trading pattern created a misleading appearance with the intention to manipulate the market if not the price. Thus, even if there is no connection with the buyer the trading pattern shows a concerted effort to manipulate the market and therefore it was observed that the appellant was not acting as a genuine seller. It was further observed that appellant had no bonafide intention to sell because inspite of sufficient buy orders being placed with abundant quantity being available in the market the appellant was only placing sell orders of one share at a time. This clearly shows his intention of manipulating the market for vested reasons.
The Court thus held that the finding of the AO that the appellant had violated the provisions of Regulation 3 and 4 of PFUTP Regulations does not suffer from any error of law. The Court further held “in the given circumstances when the appellant was only selling miniscule quantity the penalty of Rs. 8 lakh is harsh and excessive and does not commensurate with the alleged violations. Given the surrounding circumstances we are of the opinion that the penalty of Rs. 1 lakh in the given circumstances shall be just and sufficient.”
In view of the above, the appeal was allowed and impugned order affirmed.[Tanuj Khandelwal v. SEBI, 2021 SCC OnLine SAT 78, decided on 04-01-2021]
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