SEBI v. Transgene Biotek Ltd. and others (GDR issues, 2022)

Judgment entered

✓ 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 June 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised Transgene Biotek Ltd. and five individuals Rs 97 lakh in total over two 2011 global depository receipt issues in which about USD 40 million of proceeds were moved offshore and the issues were announced misleadingly. The company alone was fined Rs 38 lakh.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

9.7m INR

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. This regulator states penalties in INR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

An adjudicating officer of SEBI issued this order on 27 June 2022 against Transgene Biotek Ltd. (TBL), a company listed on BSE, and five individuals: its chairman and managing director K. Koteswara Rao, independent director Soma Sekhar Marthi, executive director Narayana Murthy Pentyala, and two outside individuals, Deepak Mishra and Sampath Kumar Meesala. SEBI examined two GDR issues, in February and October 2011, each of 25 lakh GDRs, which raised about USD 23 million and USD 17.5 million.

SEBI's case, set out in the order, was that the proceeds were credited to a Swiss bank account operated under a limited power of attorney and were then sent on to a chain of offshore entities, with only a small amount coming to the company in India. It alleged that the company announced allotments of GDRs on dates when no real subscription had occurred, giving investors a false picture, and that disclosures under the listing agreement and insider trading rules were not made properly.

The order imposes penalties for breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the fraud and unfair trade practices regulations, plus listing and insider-trading-code defaults for the company. It records that a whole-time member had earlier, on 28 August 2019, directed the company to bring back about USD 38.5 million and restrained the main noticees from the securities market, and that this adjudication addressed monetary penalties only.

Penalties were Rs 38,00,000 on the company, made up of Rs 30 lakh for the fraud charge and smaller sums for listing and insider trading code defaults, Rs 20,00,000 on Mr Rao, Rs 7,00,000 on Mr Marthi, Rs 12,00,000 on Mr Pentyala and Rs 10,00,000 each on Mr Mishra and Mr Meesala. The total is Rs 97,00,000, payable within 45 days.

The record does not show whether any of the money was recovered, whether the penalties were paid or appealed, or whether investors recovered any losses. The order does not mention a criminal case.

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. 2022-06-27 SEBI adjudication 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

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.