SEBI Bans Actor Arshad Warsi, 58 Others From Markets For up to 5 yrs

Sebi, the markets regulator, has banned Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi, his wife Maria Goretti, and 57 others from trading in the stock market for 1 to 5 years. 

This action was taken after they were linked to misleading YouTube videos that encouraged people to buy shares of Sadhna Broadcast.

Sebi also fined Arshad Warsi and Maria Goretti ₹5 lakh each and barred them from the market for 1 year, according to an order issued on Thursday.

Sebi has not only banned the involved individuals from the market but also ordered them to return illegal profits of ₹58.01 crore, along with 12% annual interest from the end of the investigation period until the money is paid. Arshad Warsi earned ₹41.70 lakh in profit, while his wife Maria made ₹50.35 lakh.

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According to Sebi’s final order, the main people behind the scam were Gaurav Gupta, Rakesh Kumar Gupta, and Manish Mishra. Subhash Aggarwal, a director at the registrar of Sadhna Broadcast, acted as a link between Mishra and the company’s promoters.

Peeyush Agarwal and Lokesh Shah helped misuse accounts for the manipulative trades. Peeyush was a dealer at Choice, and Lokesh owned the Delhi franchise of the brokerage — both played key roles in the scheme. Jatin Shah also had a major part in carrying out the plan.

Other individuals either helped with the trades or passed on information, though some didn’t use their own accounts to trade, Sebi noted in its 109-page order.

Sebi said the scam was carried out in two well-planned steps. In the first step, people linked to the promoters traded shares among themselves to slowly raise the stock price and make it look like there was strong market interest. Even though the trade volumes were small, the stock price went up a lot because there weren’t many buyers or sellers, making it easy to manipulate the price with little money.

In the second phase of the scheme, fake and promotional videos were shared on YouTube channels like Moneywise, The Advisor, and Profit Yatra, which were run by Manish Mishra, Sebi said. These videos falsely showed Sadhna Broadcast Ltd (SBL) as a great investment and were released at the same time as the manipulated trading to boost the fake market interest.

The order came after Sebi received complaints between July and September 2022 about price manipulation and the selling of shares in Sadhna Broadcast Ltd (SBL). The complaints also mentioned that fake YouTube videos were being uploaded to mislead investors and that a paid marketing campaign worth crores was used to spread these videos widely.

On March 2, 2023, Sebi passed an interim order against 31 people. After that, it launched a detailed investigation into the stock manipulation that took place between March 8 and November 30, 2022.

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