SEBI v. Gaurav Gupta and others (cornering Mentha oil futures at MCX, 2023)

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 March 2023 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised 23 entities and people for helping a group of funded accounts build a dominant long position in Mentha oil futures and warehouse stock at the Multi Commodity Exchange in 2018. The order found fund-routing proxies, connected traders and a broker with its directors liable for fraud and for breaching position-limit circulars.

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

In 2018 the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) noticed that a set of apparently separate accounts, funded by North End Foods Marketing Pvt Ltd or by proxy entities, held large long positions and a large share of the deliverable Mentha oil in exchange-accredited warehouses. By 22 June 2018 the first group of accounts held more than 75 per cent of the deliverable stock. SEBI asked MCX to examine whether these connected entities had tried to corner the long side of Mentha oil contracts in breach of the position-limit circulars.

This order, issued in March 2023 after a notice of September 2022, deals with noticees 3 to 25. They were four entities alleged to be proxies that moved funds, including Gaurav Gupta, Saurabh Kumar Vaish, Vimuk Enterprises and Rapid Credit & Holdings, fifteen trading entities and individuals grouped as the funded accounts, a commodity trading member, R. K. Commodities Services Pvt. Ltd, and its three directors. SEBI alleged that the traders' positions should be clubbed because of the shared funding, that the proxies concealed the connections, and that the broker failed to raise alerts or apply due diligence on connected clients.

The adjudicating officer held that the first nineteen noticees were part of a scheme or artifice that concealed the links between them and created a dominant position in Mentha oil futures with potential to disturb the market, a violation of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the fraud-on-the-market regulations, together with the position-limit circulars. He found that the proxies did not trade on the exchange and so were not liable for the limit breach, but that the broker and its directors aided the scheme by failing to generate alerts and to carry out due diligence.

The penalties, as the order's table reads, were Rs 5 lakh each under section 15HA for the four proxies and for fifteen traders, Rs 1 lakh each under 15HB for the fifteen traders for the limit breach, Rs 5 lakh under 15HB for the broker, and Rs 10 lakh under 15HA on the broker and its three directors jointly and severally. The table layout is hard to read, so the library leaves the headline penalty figure blank rather than risk summing it wrongly. The order notes it could not compute any gain or investor loss.

The record does not show appeals, payment, the fate of the North End Foods Marketing company that appears as the source of the funds, or the price effect of the positions. It describes no criminal case.

This library tags the matter as cornering. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2023-03-31 SEBI adjudication 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.