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Investors in the National Spot Exchange Ltd are a worried lot – there is talk they may recover only 10 per cent of their total dues worth Rs 5,500 crore from the spot exchange.
NSEL is expected to bring in five per cent of the outstanding amount on Wednesday and also declare a payment schedule for future settlement of dues.
At an NSEL investors meet here on Tuesday, a recently formed NSEL Investors Forum questioned the exchange’s lack of communication.
It called for suspension of MCX’s licence and for the Government to supersede and replace the existing board with a respectable name such as Deepak Parekh.
The forum said the exchange was liable to its investors as it is the counter-party to every investor — as a seller to every buyer and as a buyer to every seller (novation) and guarantees settlement of all contracts.
Sharad Saraf, Convenor, NSEL Investors Forum, said, “Everything was fine until July 29 as all payments were on time and there was no suspicion. There was no reason for issuing the Government circular and we expect the brokers to help us recover our monies from NSEL.”
The forum said it was concerned on why the NSEL Web site did not furnish collection details in the escrow account and status of all payments made by borrowers.
“We are dissatisfied that the exchange did not do proper due diligence on its borrowers and we had no reason to believe that the warehouse receipts were either bogus or goods were not there,” said Saraf, who added that NSEL owed him Rs 60 crore. Pointing out the case of a rice mill which had only 15,000 tonnes, instead of 3 lakh tonnes it was supposed to contain, the forum said there were many shell companies whose owners had little idea of the commodities that were being transacted by them using the warehouse receipts.
After waiting for nearly two weeks, the forum has demanded that the Government and the regulator Forward Markets Commission ring fence the assets of Financial Technologies, its promoter Jignesh Shah, and family to meet the shortfall of funds as NSEL, MCX and FT had common promoters and directors.
Also mooted was a re-look at the ‘fit and proper’ criteria given to Jignesh Shah, promoter of FT, and his management team to run exchanges.
> raghavendrarao.k@thehindu.co.in
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