INDIA’S Supreme Court on Wednesday (November 5) gave the giant Sahara business group extra time to comply with an order to repay billions of dollars it collected from small rural savers through illegal bond sales.
Sahara, a famous name in India through its sponsorship of the national cricket team, raised around 240 billion rupees ($4.4bn/£2.73bn) from tens of millions of savers in a process later judged by authorities to be against the law.
The court said it appeared the Sahara group was not in a position to make the entire payment right now.
“We have taken a slightly liberal view with the concern of depositors (in mind),” the three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said.
The court ordered the group to pay 51 billion rupees immediately to the Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI) of India, the securities regulator, which is overseeing the repayment process.
The remainder should be repaid in two installments – the first in early January and the rest by the first week of February.
The court ordered the group to repay the money with 15 per cent interest by the end of November but Sahara missed the deadline.
