TOI
New Delhi, Feb 2: Marker regulator SEBI on Monday moved the Supreme Court seeking permission to interrogate Satyam’s disgraced founder and former CEO B Ramalinga Raju.
PTI reports that Solicitor General G E Vahanvati submitted the request before a bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan on behalf of SEBI. The bench has posted the matter for hearing on Tuesday.
SEBI had earlier moved the high court challenging a lower court order, which denied it permission to interrogate the Raju brothers, who are in judicial custody.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court on January 30, however, declined to hear SEBI’s petition, seeking custody of Satyam scam accused Raju and brother B Rama Raju, without hearing the two brothers, and posted the matter for hearing on February 9.
Appearing for SEBI, Vahanvati said the high court should allow the market regulator to interrogate the accused and record their statements because it is the relevant agency to look into this technical scam and that it is empowered to do so under Section 11(c) of the SEBI Act.
However, justice Reddy said that he would not hear SEBI’s petition in the absence of the accused being represented in the matter.
Vahanvati had on Thursday found fault with the lower court which has rejected its plea to question the accused on technical grounds. The magistrate's reasoning that SEBI is not an investigating agency is also not correct, the solicitor general had said.
Raju was arrested in Hyderabad on January 9 and since then has been inaccessible to the separate investigation teams of SEBI and SFIO, which reached the city as early as January 8 — a day after Ramalinga disclosed a Rs 7,800 crore accounting fraud in his company.
The application seeking permission to record Raju's statement was filed by SEBI on January 12, on the same day when his bail application was filed by his lawyer and the police sought his judicial custody. Since, then the court has not granted permission to SEBI to interrogate Raju.
Analysts say SEBI officials, with their financial expertise, are in a better position to unravel the scam than the police.