Sebi's Brightcom crackdown: Shankar Sharma says details submitted, hope for early closure

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Hours after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) barred Shankar Sharma from selling shares of Brightcom Group, the ace investor took to X, formerly Twitter, early on August 23 to say he had submitted all required reconciled remittance data to the markets regulator.

"We have submitted all required reconciled remittance data to SEBI today, totalling to Rs 56.65 crore for 1.5 crore shares at Rs 37.7. Delay was because of bank reconciliation data pending from company. We look forward to early closure of the matter," he wrote.

Sharma is among the 23 entities prohibited from selling Brightcom shares, according to an interim SEBI order.

The order, dated August 22, was passed as part of the investigation into the company’s preferential allotment of shares. The order was passed with urgency after findings “clearly” showed “manipulations carried out by BGL and other Noticees (24 of them), in respect of BGL’s preferential allotments, which inter alia involve fictitious receipts of share application money from allottees and siphoning of funds from BGL.”

According to SEBI, Sharma, noticee number 25, was issued 1,50,00,000 warrants at Rs 37.77 apiece, which would have required him to pay Rs 56.66 crore to the company but only Rs 39.98 crore was received, leading to a shortfall of Rs 16.67 crore.

Even the Rs 39.98 crore payment could not be verified, the market regulator said.

In November 2021, Sharma had called BCG a 4 AM stock. “The world is sleeping. But a faint bit of light is creeping up at the edges. That's the home run period,” he wrote.

Also Read: SEBI stops Brightcom’s statutory auditors from engaging with company; bars CMD and CFO from Board positions

SEBI has also stopped Brightcom chairman and managing director Suresh Kumar Reddy and CFO Narayan Raju from holding the position of a director or any key managerial position in any listed company or its subsidiaries until further orders. It restrained Suresh Kumar Reddy from dealing in securities until further orders.

It also asked the company to ensure that statutory auditors of the company, P Murali & Co and PCN & Associates, including their past and present partners, did not engage with BGL or its subsidiaries in any capacity or manner whatsoever.

Brightcom has been in the eye of the storm ever since its accounting irregularities have come to the fore.

The company, once a darling of millions of retail investors, saw its share price zoom up from barely Rs 4 in April 2021 to a high of Rs 118 in December 2021. It is currently trading at Rs 24.45 mark.