The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on March 2 banned 31 entities, including Arshad Warsi and his wife, Maria Goretti, from the market. The move comes in the wake of misleading videos on ‘The Advisor’ and ‘Moneywise’ YouTube channels, luring investors to buy the shares of Sadhna Broadcast which itself has also been banned, alongwith its promoters.
SEBI has impounded illegal gains of Rs. 41.90 crore made after the videos were uploaded. According to the market regulator, Arshad made gains of Rs. 29.40 lakh while Maria profited by Rs. 37.60 lakh.
The SEBI order came after it received complaints that there was price manipulation and offloading of shares (also known as pump-and-dump) by certain entities in the Sadhna scrip. SEBI then noticed a spurt in the price and volume of Sadhna scrip between April 2022 and mid-July 2022.
Subsequent to the release of the videos, there was an increase in the price and trading volume of the Sadhna scrip. In this period, certain promoter shareholders, key management people of Sadhna and non-promoter shareholders offloaded a significant part of their holdings at inflated prices and booked profits. One of the misleading videos on the two YouTube channels was that Sadhna Broadcast was going to be taken over by Adani Group. Another video claimed that a large US corporation had entered into a contract to produce four devotional movies with Sadhna Broadcast.