The exercise of discretionary powers: The case of debarment and restraint from capital markets

by Natasha Aggarwal, Bhavin Patel, and Renuka Sane.

Introduction

Financial market regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), can impose monetary penalties and other sanctions, including debarment from capital markets and restraint from dealing in particular securities. Enforcement action by the state, such as a market regulator, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, empowering the state to impose sanctions ensures that violators face consequences. Enforcement actions potentially serve as a deterrent against future violations and restore society’s (and the market’s) trust in the system’s fairness. However, if the procedure established by law is not followed while imposing sanctions or if the sanctions are unpredictable or disproportionate to the offence, the process can be seen as unjust and lose its legitimacy. Such actions would damage markets instead of protecting them. Research suggests little clarity exists about the basis for determining penalty amounts in insider trading cases ( Asthana, Sane, and Vivek, 2021) and that there is no discernible pattern on how SEBI applies debarment provisions (Damle and Zaveri, 2022).

Debarment and restraint have enormous business, reputational, and career consequences on whom they are imposed. Section 11(4) of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992 (SEBI Act) requires that SEBI provide written reasons when ordering debarment or restraint in final and interim orders. Such reasons must explain why a sanction is necessary in the interests of investors or the market. SEBI has ordered debarment in 575 instances and debarment with disgorgement in 111 instances (SEBI Annual Report (2022-23)) across all violations. This article investigates SEBI’s process for applying debarment and restraint sanctions. It focuses on the following questions:

1. Whether SEBI specifies reasons for ordering debarment and/or restraint?
2. What reasons are specified?
3. Are these reasons special to the instances where debarment or restraint is ordered?
4. Is there a correlation between the amount of quantified gain or advantage and the period of debarment or restraint ordered?
5. If the answers to the above questions are negative, are there constitutional grounds of arbitrariness and non-application of mind on which such orders can be challenged?

Our analysis suggests that SEBI often does not provide reasons for imposing debarment and/ or restraint. When it does give some reasons, it does not indicate why debarment and/ or restraint are imposed rather than other sanctions, such as penalties. In such instances, SEBI uses near-identical language in its orders when imposing debarment and/ or restraint as it does when imposing penalties. We also find little correlation between the quantified gain or advantage resulting from the violation and the period of debarment or restraint. Our reading of the law suggests that SEBI’s processes expose its orders to challenge on constitutional grounds of non-application of mind and arbitrariness.

Data and methods

Our data consists of SEBI orders on insider trading, which has become an important issue for SEBI in recent years. During 2022-23, SEBI took up 85 insider trading investigations and imposed penalties worth Rs. 3 crore (SEBI Annual Report (2022-23)). There has also been a rise in the percentage of appeals in insider trading cases allowed at the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), from 9% in 2021-2022 to 44% in 2022-2023. The increasing numbers of insider trading matters investigated, penalties, debarment and restraint imposed, and appeals allowed by SAT raise questions about whether SEBI has exercised its administrative discretion in consistently, rationally, and predictably determining sanctions.

We collected a set of insider trading orders passed by SEBI between September 2009 and July 2023. We then created a dataset of orders which matched the following set of keyword searches relating to insider trading: a single instance of ‘insider’ AND a single instance of ‘UPSI’ OR ‘unpublished’ OR ‘prevention’ OR ‘insider trading’ (case-insensitive). This gave us 913 observations (599 by Adjudication Officers (AOs) and 314 by Whole-Time Members (WTMs)). AOs do not have the power to impose debarment and restraint as sanctions. We, therefore, focus on the subset of observations related to WTMs. Table 1 presents the summary of our dataset.

Table 1: Summary of our data

There are 188 instances where WTMs have ordered debarment from capital markets and 71 instances of restraint from dealing in securities of the relevant company. In 57 cases, debarment and restraint have both been ordered. We observed no qualitative difference between these 57 cases and the remaining cases where only debarment or restraint was ordered. The average debarment period is about three years, and the average period of restraint is two years.

As described earlier, the SEBI Act requires SEBI to give reasons for imposing debarment or restraint. We use this as the basis of our analysis. From each order, we extracted information on whether SEBI explicitly provided reasons for imposing debarment or restraint, what the reasons were, and whether the order noted the amount gained or loss avoided by the violator. We then used the ‘Free online text compare tool’ from GoTranscript to compare SEBI’s reasons for imposing penalties with reasons for ordering debarment and restraint. This helps us understand if the reasons provided by SEBI are generic or specific. We also studied whether the number of years of debarment or restraint was correlated with the amount gained or loss avoided. This provides one measure of determining proportionality in such orders.

Results

Has SEBI specified reasons?

Table 2: How often does SEBI provide reasons for its actions?

Table 2 shows SEBI orders do not provide a rationale in ~19% of cases where debarment has been sanctioned and ~72% of cases where restraint has been ordered.

What reasons has it specified?

Where SEBI does provide reasons, they are similar to non-statutory factors it provides when imposing penalties higher than the minimum prescribed under the SEBI Act. The reasons include:

1. Ensuring a level playing field and minimising information asymmetry.
2. Protecting the investors’ interests.
3. Regulating and developing the market.
4. Upholding standards of transparency, good governance and ethical behaviour.
5. Upholding the integrity, orderly development and fairness of the market.
6. The seriousness of the violation.
7. Insider trading is behaviour that undermines confidence in the securities market.
8. Discouraging and curbing future instances of insider trading.
9. The role and extent of involvement of an alleged violator.

Are these reasons special to the instances where debarment or restraint is ordered?

The reasons are broad and do not indicate anything special that justifies the imposition of debarment and/or restraint rather than another sanction, such as a penalty. The reasons also do not clarify how the period of debarment or restraint was determined in these instances.

Our analysis from the GoTranscript tool indicates a 99% similarity between the reasons for imposing penalties and ordering debarment and an 86% similarity between the reasons for imposing penalties and ordering restraint. This indicates that the reasons for imposing debarment or restraint are the same as those for imposing penalties. Moreover, the language used to describe these reasons is nearly identical. Application of mind in the exercise of administrative discretion implies that the regulator provides reasons for imposing a sanction and clarifies why it has decided to impose one type of sanction (such as debarment or restraint) rather than another (such as penalty). The fact that SEBI uses near-identical language suggests that SEBI does not consider the proportionality of the sanction to the specific nature and extent of the violation in recording its reasons for imposing certain sanctions or calculating the quantum of penalty or the periods of debarment and restraint. This also suggests that its orders in such instances suffer from procedural lapses and a lack of application of mind and are open to challenge.

Is there any correlation between the amount of quantified gain and the period of debarment or restraint ordered?

Table 3 provides the number of instances in which SEBI established the amount gained or loss avoided before imposing a sanction and the average period of debarment and restraint.

Table 3: Amount loss/gained and the average period of debarment

The table points to three observations.

• First, in 36% of cases where debarment was imposed, SEBI did not identify the amount gained or loss avoided. This is higher in the case of restraint at 40%.
• Second, the average sanction period is higher when the amount of gain/loss avoided is established.
• Third, SEBI imposes debarment and restraint without an end date more often in cases where it has not established the amount gained or loss avoided.

Figure 1 shows the correlation between the amount gained/loss avoided and the years of debarment and sanction in more detail.

Figure 1: Amount loss/gained and the periods of debarment and restraint

Figure 1 does not include two instances in which SEBI quantified the amount of gain and ordered both debarment and restraint ‘Till further orders’. The amounts gained in these two instances were Rs. 2,79,51,000 and Rs. 26,82,000.

There is no correlation between the period of debarment ordered and the quantified gain or advantage. There appears to be an inverse relation between the period of restraint ordered and the quantified gain or advantage. We, therefore, infer that the quantified gains or advantages have not been a consistent factor in determining the debarment or restraint period. Moreover, of the 188 instances where SEBI has imposed debarment, it could not quantify the gain in 158 instances (i.e., approximately 84%).

Constitutional safeguards on administrative discretion

One reason for SEBI’s non-application of mind when imposing debarment and restraint may be that the SEBI Act provides no guidelines. However, the Indian Constitution and case law in the Supreme Court suggest that this is not a valid excuse.

The Constitution of India imposes restrictions against the exercise of arbitrary power by the State against its citizens. Such arbitrary exercise of power violates Article 14 of the Constitution. This principle has been reiterated by the Supreme Court (Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab, (1982) 3 SCC 24; East Coast Railway v. Mahadev Appa Rao, (2010) 7 SCC 678; Trustees of H.C. Dhanda Trust v. State of Madhya Pradesh, (2020) 9 SCC 510) where it has said:

Whenever a statute transfers discretion to an authority, the discretion is to be exercised in furtherance of the objects of the enactment. The discretion is to be exercised not on whims or fancies rather, the discretion is to be exercised on a rational basis in a fair manner.

Further, the Court has also said:

Every order should demonstrate “due and proper application of mind by the person making the order” and clearly set out the reasons for the order. –East Coast Railway v. Mahadev Appa Rao, (2010) 7 SCC 678.

The Court has also held that there must be consistency in decision-making involving the exercise of administrative discretion.

[I]t is important to emphasize that the absence of arbitrary power is the first essential of the rule of law upon which our whole constitutional system is based. In a system governed by the rule of law, discretion must be confined within clearly defined limits when conferred upon executive authorities. The rule of law, from this point of view, means that decisions should be made by the application of known principles and rules and, in general, such decisions should be predictable and the citizen should know where he is. If a decision is taken without any principle or without any rule it is unpredictable and such a decision is the antithesis of a decision taken in accordance with the rule of law. — S.G. Jaisinghani v. Union of India, AIR 1967 SC 1427.

One can expect the constitutional guardrails to apply to SEBI actions, whether for penalties or debarment. Consequently, SEBI must provide clear reasons for imposing debarment or restraint, the period of such debarment and restraint, and what is special in the instances where such debarment or restraint is ordered, making it different from instances where it is not.

Conclusion

The absence of justifiable exercise of its discretionary power by SEBI when imposing debarment and restraint in a reasonable number of cases is demonstrated by the fact that there are many instances where no reasons are provided when imposing such sanctions. Where reasons are provided, they do not indicate anything special in these particular instances that distinguishes it from instances where such sanctions are not ordered and are largely the same as those provided for imposing penalties. Finally, little correlation exists between the quantified gain or advantage and the debarment or restraint imposed.

It is particularly important to examine whether SEBI provides reasons when imposing debarment or restraint, how it determines the duration of such sanctions, and what these reasons and methods are because the SEBI Act does not specify what these factors should be, unlike in the case of penalties. These reasons and methods must be described in its orders so that they are available to the persons directly affected and the general public. This is required by the rule of law principles of reasoned decisions and knowability and predictability of the law. It is not sufficient to describe such reasons and methods in internal, unpublished documents or decisions, such as those determining whether an Adjudicating Officer or a Whole-Time Member should adjudicate a matter. If SEBI fails to provide good reasons or does not clarify its methods, its orders are open to challenge on constitutional grounds of arbitrariness.

We recommend developing more precise, appropriate, and usable guidelines in the legal framework to guide and constrain SEBI’s discretion in imposing sanctions. The amount gained or loss avoided in insider trading cases may be difficult to quantify. Given this, the 15J factors must be modified to indicate how the debarment period can be calculated in such instances. The Competition Commission of India (Determination of Monetary Penalty) Guidelines, 2024 may be a good reference point for designing such guidelines. Having a clear set of guidelines that SEBI follows in its orders will help satisfy the requirements of consistency, non-arbitrariness, and predictability. This will also help address the high (44%) overturn rate at the SAT, which SEBI self-reports for its insider trading cases. This is perhaps attributable to the frequency with which the SAT modifies sanctions imposed by SEBI.

The Report of the High-Level Committee under the Chairmanship of Justice Anil R. Dave on the Measures for Strengthening the Enforcement Mechanism of the Board and Incidental Issues stated that debarment may serve as an ineffective deterrent mechanism. This, coupled with the lack of specific reasons in SEBI’s orders, suggests a need to review the use of debarment and restraint as sanctions in SEBI’s enforcement proceedings and to develop more implementable guidelines to guardrail the regulator’s actions in imposing such sanctions.

References

Asthana, Sane, and Vivek, An analysis of the SEBI WhatsApp Orders: Some observations on regulation-making and adjudication, Leap Blog, 27 May 2021.

Damle, Devendra and Zaveri, Bhargavi, Enforcement of Securities Laws in India: An Empirical Overview, 24 August 2022.

Securities and Exchange Board of India, Report of the High-Level Committee under the Chairmanship of Justice Anil R. Dave on the Measures for Strengthening the Enforcement Mechanism of the Board and Incidental Issues, 2020.

Securities and Exchange Board of India, Annual Report, 2022-2023

The authors are researchers at TrustBridge. The data cited here was collected by a team at TrustBridge comprising Madhav Goel, Karan Gulati, Amol Kulkarni, Sonam Patel, Praduta Singh, and the authors. We thank Sonam Patel for her assistance in data analysis and creating graphs and tables. We also thank the three anonymous referees who read an earlier draft and provided their comments and suggestions.