Mumbai: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has penalised research analyst, Govind Agarwal, for leaking IT major Wipro’s financial results, on WhatsApp, prior to the official announcement of the earnings.
The capital markets regulator fined Agarwal Rs 27.89 lakh, said a settlement order by SEBI.
“Accordingly, the applicant has remitted the sum of Rs 27,89,063 through RTGS on October 26, 2020 towards settlement charges,” it said.
As per the investigation, a message — “Wipro revenue 13700 PBIT 2323 PBT 2758” — dated January 18, 2017 was found in the WhasApp chat of Shruti Vora, a member of Market Chatter group, whose device was seized by the SEBI.
Based on the available evidence, it was observed that the referred WhatsApp message was received by Vora from Agarwal through WhatsApp on January 18, 2017.
Agarwal was working as a research analyst and as part of his job, he was required to attend the quarterly conference calls, analyse the results and prepare research reports. Vora was his colleague working in institutional equity sales team of a broking firm.
The financial figures of Wipro communicated on WhatsApp, before the disclosure of same on the stock exchanges by Wipro, were within a range of 0.03 per cent to 0.47 per cent of the actuals.
The SEBI observed that the information falls under the category of Unpublished Price Sensitive Information and the disclosure of the same by Agarwal in WhatsApp message resulted in the violation of Regulation 3(1) of the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 and Section 12A(d) and (e) of the SEBI Act, 1992.
