Senior officials of Infosys got some respite from the Securities and Appellate Tribunal (SAT) against an interim order by market regulator SEBI in an insider trading case. SAT lifted restrictions imposed by SEBI on Pranshu Bhutra, Amit Bhutra, Bharath C. Jain and Venkata Subramaniam V. V.

Bhutra is senior corporate counsel of Infosys and Venkata Subramaniam is senior principal, corporate accounting group, Infosys. SEBI had barred them from buying, selling Infosys shares till further orders. A SEBI order on September 15 last year restrained Infosys employees on allegations of insider trading rule violations

“When only prima facie observations are being made which the appellant has sufficiently explained and discharged his burden we are of the opinion that at this stage debarring a person from accessing the securities market is not justified in the facts of the case,” said a Bench led by Justice Tarun Agarwala, while quashing SEBI’s confirmatory order.

“In the absence of any direct or indirect evidence coming forth at this stage and the fact that the investigation is still continuing, which may take time for issuance of a show cause notice, we are of the opinion that the continuation of the interim order against the appellant is unjustified especially when the appellant has not traded in the scrip nor is there any finding that he is a party to unlawful gain,” the tribunal said.

Capital One and Tesora Capital, two partnership entities, were investigated by SEBi for their trading activity. These entities allegedly traded in the futures and options segment of the Infosys scrip right before the announcement of financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2020. The information pertaining to the financial results was unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI), and the UPSI period was from June 29, 2020 to July 15, 2020, according to SEBI.