SAT refuses to grant interim stay on SEBI's order against Zee's Subhash Chandra, Punit Goenka

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has declined to grant an interim stay on the order issued by the market regulator SEBI against Zee Essel Group Chairman Subhash Chandra and ZEEL Managing Director and CEO Punit Goenka.

The petitioners are expected to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court, according to reports.

The bench, consisting of judicial member Tarun Agarwala and technical member Meera Swarup, granted a two-week period to petitioners Goenka and Chandra to approach SEBI with their response. Furthermore, the bench directed the regulator to issue its decision within one week following the petitioners' submission, as per the reports.

On June 12, SEBI in an ex-parte interim order restrained Chandra and Goenka from holding any directorship or key managerial positions in listed entities on account of alleged fund diversion.

In his arguments, SEBI's counsel Darius Khambata late in June said the material gathered by the market regulator in the last four months indicated alleged siphoning off funds and showed further investigations were already underway.

Khambata also said the market regulator's actions are based on evidence.

In his arguments, senior advocate Janak Dwarkadas, representing Goenka, said that by removing two key people from the company, SEBI has infringed upon their fundamental rights to be employed.

He argued that while SEBI had issued the interim order against them, no direction had been issued against Yes Bank for appropriating the Rs 200 crore fixed deposit without ZEEL's approval.

Dwarkadas argued that investigations have not found any active irregularity about the role of the promoter or proof that the transactions are bogus.

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