Chintalapati Srinivasa Raju, a co-founder of private equity firm Peepul Capital, has been acquitted by the Supreme Court in an insider trading case, according to media reports.
The Economic Times reported that the Supreme Court has set aside an order of the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India directing Srini Raju to pay Rs 136 crore that he had earned by selling shares he owned in Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
“We have not been shown how the appellant (Srini Raju) was in any manner responsible for actions taken by those in the management of the Satyam Computer Services Ltd,” the report quoted the Supreme Court bench as saying.
SEBI had, in 2015, held Srini Raju guilty of insider trading in Satyam shares. The SEBI order had come six years after Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju admitted to cooking the company's books in 2009. Srini Raju told The Economic Times that the SEBI order was based on fraudulent filings by Satyam.
The apex court also exonerated Teja Raju and Rama Raju Junior, sons of Ramalinga Raju, from charges ot making unlawful gains, the report said.
Srini Raju was an executive director at Satyam until August 2000 and a non-executive director thereafter until January 2003.
In 2000, Srini Raju started investment firm iLabs Capital, the predecessor to Peepul Capital. Before becoming an investor, Srini Raju was also the founder-CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Satyam Software, which was later spun off as Cognizant Technology Solutions Ltd.
