The Supreme Court on July 11 asked the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to explain why the law was tweaked in 2018 to junk crucial provisions which prohibited opacity in the ownership structure of Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI).
The court’s concern was in light of a finding in the Justice A.M. Sapre expert committee report that the SEBI investigation into the allegations made by U.S.-based Hindenburg Research against the Adani Group had hit a wall because of amendments made in the FPI Regulations, 2014. These amendments had put the market regulator in a “chicken-and-egg situation” in its investigation into the “ownership” of 13 overseas entities, including the 12 FPIs mentioned in the Hindenburg report. The expert committee has said the SEBI itself suspected these 13 entities of having “opaque structures” because their chain of ownership was not clear.
Also read: Explained | Decoding the expert committee report on Adani