New Delhi:
Sahara chief Subrata Roy met with officials of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in Mumbai today. The market regulator had summoned Mr Roy to appear before it. It was acting on a Supreme Court order, which ruled as illegal a Sahara investment scheme and ordered it to refund Rs. 25,000 crore.
Sahara claims it has already repaid Rs. 20,000 crore to its investors in far flung corners of the country. But an investigation by NDTV has raised serious questions on whether Sahara has repaid its investors - and if the investors are genuine?
(Sahara chief Subrata Roy meets with Sebi: top 10 developments)Sahara says the proof of how they refunded four crore investors is in the more than 100 truckloads of documents sent to SEBI headquarters.
But when SEBI wrote to 20,000 sample depositors, asking them to apply for a refund, only 68 wrote back - less than 1%.
Sahara has in its ads claimed that its depositors are low income folk with no fixed address.
But when our reporters visited a sample of the names and addresses of Sahara investors submitted to SEBI, they found either no such address existed or no trace of the depositor:
Randhir Singh
277, Ward No.12
Saini, Mohall
Panipat
Haryana - 132 103
Sanjay Rayakwar
48, Shirla Mata
Kacari Ujjain
Madhya Pradesh - 456001
Surendra Kumar
3, Indira Colony Padampur
Sri Ganga
Nabha
Punjab - 144 624
Lawyer for Sahara S Ganesh told us that SEBI has not given them the details of those 20,000 investors. He said, "We wrote letters to them but SEBI has chosen to completely ignore and disregard the letters sent by Sahara."
Even if these are exceptions, the possibility of non-existent depositors raised alarm bells that if not all, some of the money might be laundered. Raising questions as to whether they exist at all.
Look in any small town in India's cow belt and you will find those like Indu Devi, a small tea-stall owner in Varanasi, who has trusted Sahara with her meager earnings.
She says she has been depositing small amounts with Sahara and getting her money back.
But it is an arrangement which leaves her highly vulnerable. All the details are written in a register. There is no formal record or description of the scheme.
Such examples might validate Sahara's claims to some extent, that they do have a genuine pool of investors made up of the very poor. But it also highlights how vulnerable they are to Sahara's regulatory battles, of which they have no information.
Like Surendra Sinha from Ranchi, who had subscribed to one of the schemes called Adobe Bonds by SIREC, now banned by SEBI. He says he has not been refunded, but instead made to switch to a new scheme called the Q Shop.
Q Shops are Sahara's entry into retail, advertised by the Indian cricket team as a chain of stores that will sell unadulterated goods. But on its website, it's not just a store but also an investment scheme.
A retired government servant, Mr Sinha has put all his savings in the bond. Now he says he feels cheated by Sahara, who has converted his housing bond into Q Shop. He is also worried if he will ever get the money back, he says.
Even if Sahara does have some genuine investors, who only deposit very small amounts, are they large enough in number to explain the huge sums of money Sahara claims to have raised?
Senior journalist Sharat Pradhan says, 'Yes, they do have genuine investors. But that is a class of very poor people largely from the areas of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or Jharkhand. And it is that class which neither has access to banks nor has a voice. So if their money gets swallowed away, they have nowhere to go."
On one hand, proof of ghost depositors. On the other, switching depositors from illegal schemes to new ones. Serious doubts remain over Sahara's claims that it has repaid the 20,000 crores. And if they have not, then even more serious question: where is the money?