India’s market regulator fines Reliance Industries

• Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance’s Jio Platforms in April 2020.
• Transaction aided Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries in reducing its massive debt load.
• SEBI fined Reliance and the two compliance officers 3 million Indian rupees ($38,522).

The Indian market regulator fined Reliance Industries and two of its compliance officers on Monday for failing to follow fair disclosure standards during Facebook’s $5.7 billion investment in its digital unit in 2020.

Meta’s Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Reliance’s Jio Platforms in April 2020, with the goal of enabling WhatsApp to offer payments services to millions of small businesses. The transaction aided billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries in reducing its massive debt load.

According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Reliance did not disclose the deal even after price-sensitive details about the impending investment were published in newspaper reports in March 2020, causing its shares to spike.

Outside of regular business hours, Reliance did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

“When the company abdicated its responsibility to verify and come clean on the unverified information that was floating around,” SEBI said in a late Monday order.

SEBI stated that it was “incumbent” on Reliance to provide “due clarification on its own” once it was aware of the information’s “selective availability.”

The regulator fined Reliance and the two compliance officers 3 million Indian rupees ($38,522).