SEBI v. Kuber Dealcom Pvt. Ltd (price manipulation allegation, A.F. Enterprises, 2023)

Dismissed

✓ 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 February 2023 a SEBI adjudicating officer closed the case against Kuber Dealcom Pvt. Ltd without any penalty. SEBI had alleged that its purchases above the last traded price in the illiquid shares of A.F. Enterprises Ltd helped the company's preferential allottees exit at a higher price, but the officer found no proof of collusion with any seller.

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

Kuber Dealcom Pvt. Ltd, a Kolkata company, was the only noticee in this proceeding, which belongs to the same SEBI inquiry into A.F. Enterprises Ltd shares on the BSE between May 2014 and April 2015 that produced a parallel order against three other buyers. In that period the price rose from Rs 255 to as high as Rs 648 and then collapsed.

The November 2022 show cause notice alleged that Kuber traded only in February 2015, buying 11,423 shares, including five buy orders on 3 February for 1,300 shares in total. One 200-share trade at Rs 472 lifted the last traded price by Rs 21, about 4.66 per cent of the market's positive price movement in that phase. SEBI said the company's preferential allottees began selling right afterwards and that nearly all of the shares Kuber bought came from them, so the small orders pushed the price up to let them exit.

The adjudicating officer, relying on Securities Appellate Tribunal rulings that a charge of artificially raising a price needs evidence of collusion between buyer and seller, found that the investigation showed none. He noted that no synchronised, circular, reversal or self trades were shown, that no proceedings had been started against the counterparties or the preferential allottees, and that a wild allegation of fraud cannot rest on conjecture. He gave Kuber the benefit of doubt.

The result was disposal of the proceeding under section 15HA with no penalty.

This record is a dismissal. It does not show whether SEBI appealed, and it describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation. 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 one technique 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.

• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2023-02-10 SEBI adjudication order disposing of the notice without penalty

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.