Guardrails in place to check fraud: Sebi chief

Independent directors, boards, auditors must step up to rein in greed: Pandey

- KHUSHBOO TIWARI, SAMIE MODAK & VIKAS DHOOT

Corporate misgovernance episodes like the fraud unravelled at Gensol Engineering, or front running by a mutual fund manager, are not systemic issues that require a regulatory reboot but instances of greed and egregious conduct that warrant more proactive action from independent directors, boards and auditors to rein them in, the chief of India's stock market watchdog asserted on Wednesday.

"The governance standards and guardrails are in place. The board and the independent directors have to function. Material things have to be approved by the shareholder, auditors are there... if the guardrails fail because of certain fraud or greed, which is uncontained by several stakeholders, the violation should be punished... But it is not to say that, for the egregious fault of a few, we should make things more stringent," Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey told Business Standard in an interview.