Sebi probes insider-trading in housing-loan scam

Market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has initiated a probe into possible front-running and insider trading in shares of over two dozen companies, including some blue chips, by entities and persons involved in the housing-finance scam unearthed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The initial findings, when corroborated with the charges made by the investigating agency, indicate towards large-scale front-running deals or shares being purchased or sold in these companies on the basis of prior knowledge about investment decisions being made by large institutional investors, a senior Sebi official said.

These large institutional investors could be LIC , whose Secretary (Investments) figures among those arrested by CBI in connection with the multi-crore scam , as also those investors who participated in share or debt placements arranged by investment banking and financial services firm Money Matters.

The probe would encompass large dealings and any irregular spurt in volumes or prices of shares of all the companies where these institutional investors had bought or sold shares over the past two years, they said.

Top officials of Money Matters - a fast growing entity that boasts of having served a number of top-level corporate entities in the past, including the likes of Tatas, Ambanis and Birlas - have emerged as the focal points of the scam.

Sources said though the arrested official of the country's largest insurer Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) could have been used (by Money Matters) in terms of revealing the investment decisions already taken by the PSU, he might not have been in a position to know upcoming decisions by the company or influence its investments in stocks.

As LIC is not a listed company and is not obliged to disclose its purchase or sale of shares on day-to-day basis, the names of companies where it has invested or whose shares it has sold generally come to be known with a time-lag.

Besides front-running, the regulator is also looking into possibility of insider trading by the top officials, and in some cases, promoters of the companies whose names have surfaced in the CBI probe.

Given the sensitivity of the matter and the probe being in preliminary stages, the official declined to disclose the names of the companies, adding the companies whose shares have been manipulated might not be themselves at fault.

Sebi official said the regulator had begun probing insider trading possibilities in many of these companies, even before the arrests made by CBI two days ago, as it had feared irregularities in their share dealings over the past few months.