SEBI v. K Gopalakrishnan & Co. (auditor certificate, Acropetal Technologies IPO, 2022)

Dismissed

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 8, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the order; an independent second reading of 60 SEBI records agreed on every field for 56, the four misses being penalty amounts; a later sample of 50 of the SEBI records added on 9 October agreed on every field for 46. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In March 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer closed, without penalty, proceedings against a chartered accountancy firm accused of wrongly certifying how an Acropetal Technologies bridge loan of Rs 20 crore was used, a certificate reproduced in the company's IPO prospectus. The order found no evidence the firm knew of or joined any fraud.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

A SEBI adjudicating officer, Vijayant Kumar Verma, decided the matter on 31 March 2022. The sole noticee is K Gopalakrishnan & Co., the statutory auditor of Acropetal Technologies Limited (ATL), which raised money in an IPO in February 2011 and listed on BSE and NSE in March 2011. SEBI's investigation of the IPO began in 2012 after the company's responses were found incomplete or contradictory.

SEBI alleged that the prospectus said the firm had certified that a Rs 20 crore bridge loan was used for Rs 7 crore of advances for a building and Rs 13 crore of working capital. Investigators found Rs 7 crore went to a related entity, for which the firm was also auditor, and that Rs 13 crore was sent abroad with no reason given, so the disclosure was false. SEBI alleged the firm had therefore certified wrongly and breached regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations.

The firm said it had relied on the books and documents ATL supplied and had no part in running the company. Relying on a Bombay High Court judgment and a Securities Appellate Tribunal decision on auditors, the officer held that SEBI can pursue an auditor under the fraud rules only where collusion with the company's officers is shown, and that mere negligence is a matter for the professional body. The order finds no evidence that the firm knew of or joined the company's scheme.

The proceedings were disposed of without any penalty.

The record does not show whether SEBI appealed. The order does not decide whether ATL's own prospectus disclosure was false, only that this firm's fraud was not established.

This library tags the matter as misleading issuer disclosure. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the order.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Misleading issuer disclosure — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-03-31 SEBI order

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEBI order
• Order (PDF)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.