Nearly 24 hours after the capital markets regulator came out with orders freezing accounts and properties of two Sahara Group companies, Sahara counsel K K Lahiri said on Thursday by attaching its properties, the regulator is pre-empting the legal process involving the group's application in the Supreme Court.
The counsel said the group would finalise its future course of action during the week-end as the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s orders came a day ago.
In the first week of January, the two Sahara companies-- Sahara India Real Estate Corp and Sahara Housing Investment Corp -- moved the Supreme Court saying the money deposited with Sebi -- Rs 5,120 crore (Rs 51.2 billion) -- was more than adequate to meet payments to investors and the matter was to come up for hearing next week, the counsel said.
"Money we have deposited is more than adequate to meet all our liabilities, and if we have to pay the next two installments during the first week of January and February, we would have paid the same amount two times," he said.
Asked what will be the group's future course of action, he said: “We have not finalised any action yet. We will decide our action over the week-end."
On Wednesday, Sebi passed two separate orders asking banks to freeze accounts and seize properties of SIREC and SHIC, a week after the Supreme Court pulled up the regulator for not taking action against the firms for defying the court's August 2012 order directing them to refund Rs 24,000 crore (Rs 240 billion)