Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Monday barred two individuals from the securities markets and impounded unlawful gain of Rs 1.68 crore made by them from indulging in front-running trades. Front-running refers to an illegal practice in the stock market where an entity trades on the basis of advance information from a broker or analyst before the information has been made available to clients.

Those banned by SEBI are Gaurav Dedhia, who was employed as a chief dealer with IDBI Capital Markets and Securities Ltd, and his sister Kajal Ilesh Savla, according to an order passed by the Capital markets regulator SEBI.

Apart from the securities market ban, Dedhia has been restrained from associating himself with any intermediary registered with SEBI in any capacity till further orders.

Following the commencement of investigation, Dedhia has been kept under suspension by his broker employer, it added.

In its interim order, SEBI noted that Dedhia has apparently abused his employment as a chief dealer with the broker by using the non-publicly available information about the impending orders of the Big clients of the broker, for his personal use and further by taking advantage of such information, front-running trades were executed in an unfair manner to make unlawful gains in account of his sister.

Also Read: Sebi likely to relax restrictions on government PSU disinvestment

They eventually reversed those trades around the time of placement of those large orders of the Big clients or sometimes even before that resulting in unlawful profits of around Rs 1.68 crore during the period of January 2019 to April 2021.

"The noticees have been able to make large amounts of profits in small trenches by their well-crafted manipulative scheme of front running the trades of Big Clients," SEBI said.

The Big clients of the broker included General Insurance Corporation, Ambuja Cement, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, Britannia Industries and Voltas. Such trades, they, prima facie, violated the provisions of PFUTP (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices) norms.

Accordingly, SEBI has restrained the two persons "from buying, selling or dealing in securities, either directly or indirectly, in any manner whatsoever until further orders".

In a separate interim order, the regulator has prohibited four individuals from the securities markets and also impounded illegal gains to the tune of Rs 57.66 lakh made by them through front running trades.

The regulator has barred Senthil Kumar R, who was employed with Trustline as the operation manager, his wife Geetha N, Prakash V, who was a colleague of Senthil Kumar working in Trustline itself; and his mother Geetha V.

In addition, Senthil Kumar and Prakash V have been restrained from associating themselves with any intermediary registered with SEBI, in any capacity till further orders. SEBI found that Senthil Kumar was the mastermind of the fraudulent scheme to generate profit from front-running trades of Trustline through trades executed in the trading account of his wife.

Besides, he provided information of impending orders of Trustline to Prakash V, who in turn has also front ran the impending orders of Big Client in his own trading account and in the trading account of his mother.

"Noticees went on unabatedly front-running the trades of Trustline and continued to make unlawful gains on a regular basis so much so that earning proceeds out of such unlawful acts on a regular basis had become a regular habit of the Noticees who were using these acts as a parallel source of income," SEBI noted.

The order came after the regulator conducted an investigation from May 2017 to June 2022 to ascertain as to whether certain entities had front-run the trades of Trustline Holdings Pvt. Ltd — Portfolio Management Service and Trustline Deep Alpha — Alternative Investment Fund and violated the regulatory norms.

Also Read: IRM Energy files draft papers with Sebi to raise funds via IPO

(Edited by : Anushka Sharma)