From an Indian jail, tycoon tries to sell the New York Plaza | Hacker News Reader

From an Indian jail, tycoon tries to sell the New York Plaza

reuters.com

67 pointsdataminer12 comments

To give some background on this case. He was barred from entering into equity markets in India as market regulator could not get a good idea of how he made his money. Basically his business is taking money from un-organized retailers on a daily basis and putting into some kind of investments to give them returns. When he was barred he floated a sort of an IPO without getting market in the picture. He issued debentures to millions when a private placement can be made to maximum 50 people in this country. Any more and you have to go public route. Therefore this issue was deemed illegal.

He raised more than 4.5 billion dollars in this exercise. He bought these properties using the investor money. Sahara built a few luxury townships.

When matter went to courts, he was asked to return the money to investors. It seems that so far he has returned a big chuck of it to investors. To get a bail he has to deposit $1.6 billion with the market regulator as that is the amount pending with investors.

That bail amount is insane. It would make sense if someone told me that it was a ploy to set a world record. It is a world record.

I am curious to know what parameters the court considered to set bail at this high an amount.

Not so insane when you consider the fraud he is accused of amounts to ~4 Billion USD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_India_Pariwar_investor_f...

Regardless of what he did, $1.6 Billion USD is insane. I'm sure whatever he did, he deserved jail time, but that bail amount would be very hard to stick here in the US (seems a lot like extortion to me).

Bail isn't a fee, but a security that you will return to court for trial: you put up $n bail, which is forfeited only if you flee, and returned if you show up for your court dates as promised. It's intended to make it more likely that when you're let out of jail pending trial, you won't become a fugitive, because you don't want to forfeit the bail.

But for that to be effective, the bail amount has to be a substantial portion of your net worth, so that it would actually be painful to lose it. If someone is worth billions and the bail is only $1m or something, they can just shrug it off, so it would be ineffective at compelling appearance.

Hedge Fund executives, Enron executives, etc all have had less bail than this guy,yet were worth considerable amounts. Also, a net worth isn't how much cash he has laying around. How terrible would it be if all this occurred and they found him not guilty? He would have liquidated his business for nothing. Still seems unreasonable.

Can he just stay in prison to wait for the trial? Why liquidate his portfolio to pay for a temporary bail?

This has nothing to do with hacker news. A corrupt businessman was unfortunate to be on the receiving end and landed in jail for billions he probably owes to millions of old gullible investors who lost their retirement income to his Ponzi scheme. His arrest has little to do with justice, probably more of political vendetta. How media salivates over such news & glorifies a thug :(

$1.8b bail? Indian government gonna make a lot of money..

They only make money if he skips bail - otherwise, the bail money is returned at the conclusion of the trial (even if he ultimately goes to prison).

Bail is just insurance against the accused fleeing (which is why it's set to high for someone that wealthy - if it was a few million, he could afford to just give it up).

and the government gets to keep the interest earned on the same over the time i guess...

No. It's a standard bond but the bond paper is held by the court.

When the court case comes to a conclusion, then you get your bond paper and you keep any interest earned.

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