SEBI Levies Rs 54 Lakh Fine on Iris Mediaworks, 8 Officials for Violation of Market Norms

New Delhi, Nov 18: Markets regulator Sebi on Wednesday levied a total fine of Rs 54 lakh on Iris Mediaworks Ltd, which is now known as Jump Networks Ltd, and eight officials for violation of market norms.

Besides, the firm and the officials have also been restrained from accessing securities market for varying periods, ranging between six months and one year.

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Iris Mediaworks is facing fine of Rs 20 lakhs while the regulator has imposed fine in the range of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh on the officials.

Rajendra Karnik, Sandesh Sawant, Rakesh Naik, Kunal Ranjan, Neha Gupta, Allan Rebello, Mitesh Jani and Atul Kumar are the officials who have been penalised by Sebi. They were directors of the company during the period of violations.

The allegations mainly pertained to misrepresentation of financials by the firm.

In this regard, a forensic audit report was submitted to Sebi and the findings of the report for the period between April 2015- till March 2017 were examined by the regulator.

It was found that Iris failed to represent a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the company in compliance with accounting standards, thereby violating LODR Regulations.

There were misrepresentations of financials on various occasions relating to investments in other companies.

By reporting the advances made to strike off companies as trade advances in the financial statements, the company has misrepresented its financials. Also, the trade advances paid to 35 entities outstanding at the beginning of the year financial years 2015-16 and 2016-17 were misrepresented.

Sebi also found that the funds disclosed as long term loans and advances by Iris in its audited financials for FY2015-16 were not advances or loans provided on returnable basis and hence, are misrepresented to that extent.

Iris has misrepresented creditors and debtors in its financial statements to the extent of Rs 4.75 crore and Rs 26.63 crore, respectively. Among others, the firm failed to disclose related party transactions.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)