Madhabi Buch: 500 SEBI officers wrote 5-page complaint to finance ministry

The Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and its chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch have so far maintained a studied silence on charges levelled by Hindenburg Research, the main opposition party in Parliament (the Congress) and Zee Group promoter Subhash Chandra.

While Chandra accused the chairperson of corruption and Hindenburg and Pawan Khera of the Congress accused her of investing in offshore funds linked to the Adani Group and availing undue benefits from ICICI Bank, a report in the Economic Times on 4 September indicates that trouble has been brewing in SEBI for the past several years.

In a five-page letter to the finance ministry dated 6 August, as many as half the Group A officers at SEBI — 500 of them — alleged toxic conditions at work. During the last 2–3 years, the letter said, shouting, scolding and public humiliation at the highest levels had become the norm.

Madhabi Puri Buch was the first woman and the first from the private sector to be appointed chairman in 2022 after being a full-time board member since 2018.

The letter alleged that the in-house mental health counsellor, who earlier received very few visits, has of late been receiving many more employees complaining of mental stress.

The letter complained of ‘unrealistic’ work targets with ‘changing goalposts’ and maintained that fear was the primary instrument being used to achieve results.

While the SEBI top brass keeps claiming the induction of ‘best-in-class technology’, the letter sarcastically added that the regulator had clearly failed to introduce ‘best-in-class’ human relations and man-management practices.

In an e-mail reply to ET, SEBI claimed that the issues had been resolved with the employees, that employee–management relations were an on-going process and that the KRAs (key results areas) of employees had been revised in consultation with themselves and after approval from the various department heads.

Minor adjustments, however, were made — the response claimed — after the letter to the finance minister was sent out.

SEBI, however, is yet to reply to charges levelled by Subhash Chandra of the Zee Group and Pawan Khera of the Congress. While Chandra accused the SEBI chairperson of creating roadblocks to the merger of Sony and Zee, Khera attacked her for allegedly accepting a "salary" and a "pension" from the ICICI bank till 2022–23 — though she had resigned before 2013.

Khera argued that it was a conflict of interest for the SEBI chairperson to be drawing a pension and a salary from a private-sector bank listed in the market regulated by SEBI.

ICICI Bank’s clarification — that Madhabi Puri Buch was paid only 'retiral' benefits and not any salary or pension and that she was entitled to redeem her ESOPs or stock options within 10 years of retirement — raised more questions instead.

Khera pointed to publicly available information to claim that the policy of the ICICI Bank, as provided on its website, provided that employees who resigned must redeem their options within 3 months and not 10 years.

He wondered why rules were relaxed in her case and how her average annual pension could be higher than her average annual salary was while she was still employed by ICICI.