Corporate laws and ethics fuel economic sustenance except when they become tools in the wrong hands. That throws open the Pandora’s Box, and then cases like NSEL pop up. NSEL is not only a case of flouted rules but also about how brokers –the fundamental building blocks to any exchange –game the system and by and large get away with it. It also exhibits the inefficiency of the system to penetrate deeper to catch hold of wrongdoers.
That leads back to another outlandish order passed in the case--the forced merger between NSEL and FTIL against every established norm of corporate governance. Not only does that leave 63k FTIL shareholders in the lurch, the baffling verdict opens up an easy escape route to NSEL defaulters and pushes FTIL into paying up Rs 5600 crore for NSEL discrepancies.
This “subtle” attempt of letting real culprits get shielded under the cover of corporate jurisprudence is unforgivable. The forced merger in the name of public interest is an outlandish example on a global level of how incompetent and infertile are Indian markets for investment –more so at the time when PM’s brainchild Make of India seeks foreign investments.
Piecing it all together, the concern that defaulters will be set free is as alarmingly dangerous as the system chasing down innocents who should not be paying for someone else’s flimflam. Isn’t it time for a change of course to trigger necessary steps and actions.