SEBI v. Austral Coke and Projects Ltd and others (IPO prospectus disclosure and trading, 2022)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 8, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the order; an independent second reading of 60 SEBI records agreed on every field for 56, the four misses being penalty amounts; a later sample of 50 of the SEBI records added on 9 October agreed on every field for 46. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

Report an error in this record (sebi-61605-misleading-issuer-disclosure-2022) by email

A 143-page SEBI adjudication order examined 20 noticees over the 2008 IPO of Austral Coke and Projects and trading in its shares in 2009. It rejected most allegations but fined the company and two of its promoters for a misleading prospectus, and fined three traders for synchronized and reversal trades, Rs 14 lakh in total.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

1.4m INR

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in INR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The adjudicating officer of the Securities and Exchange Board of India decided the matter on 29 July 2022. Austral Coke and Projects Ltd, later renamed Greenearth Resources & Projects Ltd, made an initial public offer in August 2008 and listed on the BSE and NSE. The 20 noticees included the company, its promoters, traders and brokers, the IPO's merchant banker and others. The proceedings began from notices of 2014 and 2018.

SEBI alleged that the prospectus misstated the capacity of the company's coke plant, misdescribed why the chairman and managing director had left an earlier company, Gujarat NRE Coke, and misreported the use of the IPO proceeds. It also alleged that later circular, reversal and self trades in 2009 inflated volume and the price, and that the merchant banker failed to do due diligence.

The adjudicating officer found most of that not made out. He found insufficient material on the capacity claim, no proof that corporate announcements were non-genuine, no established manipulation against the wider set of noticees, and no failure by the merchant banker. He did find that the prospectus did not properly tell investors why two promoters had left the earlier company, and that three noticees traded in a way that was not genuine, with orders matched within seconds.

The company and two promoter-directors were penalised Rs 10 lakh jointly and severally under section 15HA and Rs 1 lakh jointly and severally under section 15HB. Chetan Wadhwa, Narendrabhai Amin and Vijay Yuvraj Nanvare were each penalised Rs 1 lakh. That is Rs 14 lakh in total, which the officer set low in view of the passage of time and of restrictions on the company continuing since 2009.

The record does not show whether anyone appealed, whether payments were made, or any quantified gain or loss. The order describes no criminal case, though it mentions an earlier investigation by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office.

This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure and matched orders. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the order.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Misleading issuer disclosure — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-07-29 SEBI order

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEBI order

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.