SEBI v. Austral Coke and Projects Ltd and others (IPO proceeds, 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.

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In December 2022 a SEBI whole-time member found that Austral Coke and Projects, which raised money in a 2008 IPO, diverted and siphoned about Rs 29.42 crore of the proceeds to a promoter-group entity. The company was ordered to recover that sum and its promoters and audit committee directors were restrained from the market, while a separate book-manipulation charge was not made out.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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.

What is alleged to have happened

SEBI whole-time member Ananta Barua issued these orders on 5 December 2022 in the matter of Austral Coke and Projects Ltd, now Greenearth Resources and Projects Limited, listed on BSE and NSE. The document combines two final orders arising from two show cause notices of 9 June 2015. There were twelve noticees: the company; its chairman Ratan Lal Tamakhuwala and his son Rishi Raj Agarwal, the managing director; the independent directors S.K. Chowdhary, Rajendra Kumar Khaitan and M.K. Sinha; several other individuals; and a broker, SIC Stock and Services Pvt Ltd.

The first notice concerned the company's August 2008 initial public offer. After an Income Tax Department reference and investor complaints, SEBI alleged misstatements in the offer document about coke production capacity and about the promoters' disassociation from another company, and misuse of the IPO money. The second notice alleged manipulated books of account and fictitious trades with entities controlled by a businessman, Ajit Kumar Jindal, together with self-trades.

The order finds that the production-capacity statement was not shown to be wrong, but that the company suppressed material facts about the promoters' departure from the other company. On the money, it finds that Rs 52.08 crore of issue proceeds moved to six entities controlled by Mr Jindal and Rs 29.42 crore of that ended up with a promoter-group entity, Anarcon Resources, which it treats as siphoning in breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the PFUTP Regulations. It held the chairman and managing director responsible for the company's acts, and held the three independent directors, who made up the audit committee, to have failed in reviewing the use of funds. The proceedings against Mr Sinha abated on his death. The charge that the books were manipulated through fictitious transactions was not established, and the other noticees were disposed of without directions.

The broker SIC was found to have executed 14 self-trades, about 9.43 per cent of market volume, with buy and sell orders seconds apart for its clients, which the order treats as showing intent to create artificial volume. No direction was given against it, because registered intermediaries are ordinarily dealt with under separate disciplinary rules and a tribunal ruling in its own case.

Directions: the company must bring back or recover Rs 29.42 crore of IPO proceeds within a year, and the first five noticees are restrained from the securities market for six months or until that recovery is complied with. No monetary penalty is stated in these orders.

The record does not show whether the money was recovered, whether the orders were appealed, or what the rest of the Rs 52.08 crore was used for. No criminal case is described.

This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure and wash trading. 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.
• Wash trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-12-05 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.