In a hard-hitting interview, Sucheta Dalal, the managing editor of Moneylife and perhaps the country’s most highly regarded commentator on capital markets, says SEBI’s response to the recent Hindenburg allegations has “zero credibility”. Speaking about SEBI’s handling of the Hindenburg allegations since January 2023, when they first broke, Dalal calls them “a text book example of how not to handle such a situation”.
In a 25-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, she raises serious and disturbing questions both about SEBI, as the market regulator, and Madhabi Puri Buch, SEBI’s chairperson. Dalal also raises potentially damaging questions about the behaviour – actually silence – from SEBI’s board of directors and the Union finance ministry.
There are several different issues raised in this interview about the Buchs and also about SEBI’s functioning in the years before Madhabi became chairperson as well as about the chairpersons who preceded her.