KM Abraham, the man behind Subrata Roy's arrest

New Delhi: With the law finally knocking at Subrata Roys' doors, it may be appropriate to remember the man in Sebi who signed on the dotted line of the order that finally lead to the arrest of the Sahara group Supremo. KM Abraham, a 1982 Kerala cadre IAS officer, investigated Sahara during his tenure as whole-time member at Sebi. It is interesting that Abraham, a wholetime director of Sebi till July 2011, was not given an extension at Sebi, allegedly due to political pressure, but he exposed the Sahara Group's two shadowy companies so thoroughly that neither the Securities Appellate Tribunal, nor the Supreme Court, could have found fault with it. Abraham is now a Additional Chief Secretary with the Kerala government in Thiruvananthapuram. Born on December 30, 1957, he has pursued civil engineering and also completed PHD in urban planning. He associated with SEBI in the year 2008. He is the man most responsible for bringing the Sahara boss to justice. It was Abraham's order against the Sahara India Real Estate Corporation (SIREC) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation (SHIC), dated 23 June 2011 that finally brought Roy to heel. He later wrote to the Prime Minister alleging that the Finance Ministry was pressuring the regulator to go easy on several cases including Sahara. What Abraham suspected was that Sahara money could be laundered money, something the Supreme Court too alluded too – though that was beyond the scope of the court's final judgment dated 31 August 2012. Despite Sahara denials of benami transactions, Judge JS Khehar, one of the two judges on the bench, observed: “Despite restraint, one is compelled to record that the whole affair seems to be doubtful, dubious and questionable. Money transactions are not expected to be casual, certainly not in the manner expressed by the two companies.” After the investigation, it was clarified that Sahara Group was suffering from lack of corporate governance. SIREC and SHIC of Sahara group were busy in collecting Rs. 40000 crore from the market but both the companies did not even have the list of its cemented investors. Abraham proved that the company was not even following the guidelines laid down by SEBI for the goodwill of investors.