Case Law Details
Price Waterhouse & Co. Bangalore LLP Vs SEBI (Securities Appellate Tribunal)
1. By this Miscellaneous Application Applicants / Original Appellants seek extension of the period of interim relief granted by this Appellate Tribunal vide order dated 15.02.2018. By the said order Applicants /Appellants were allowed to continue with the auditing assignments of their existing clients till 31.03.2019 or till a newly constituted Bench takes an appropriate final decision in the matter, whichever is earlier, which is now sought to be extended till 31.03.2020 by this Miscellaneous Application..
2. Learned Senior Counsel for the Applicants / Appellants Shri Janak Dwarkadas argued in detail that the prayer to extend the period of interim relief till 31.03.2020 is because seven clients of the Applicants / Appellants follow calendar year as their accounting year and the remaining clients have financial year as their account year. The former set of clients need to take decision regarding appointment of their auditor any time now and the later set of clients also need to take a similar decision in the next few months. Further, decision regarding the appointment / change of auditor is a time consuming one with onerous procedural requirements. It is also submitted by the Applicants / Appellants that a few clients have already written to them seeking update of the appeal pending before this Appellate Tribunal so that those clients could take an early decision relating to engaging their auditor for the ensuing accounting year.
3. Through the interim relief already granted by this Appellate Tribunal the Applicants / Appellants have been allowed to carry out the auditing assignments of only their existing clients, list of which was given to the Appellate Tribunal as ordered. As such, the Applicants / Appellants are already suffering huge financial loss as they are not allowed to take fresh /new clients. This itself is a huge burden imposed by a sweeping impugned order which has violated the premises set forth by the Bombay High Court. Further, there are serious questions of law which need to be addressed since the impugned order failed to establish any vicarious liability of the parties (Applicants / Appellants) because it was the Bengaluru firm that conducted the audit of Satyam Computers several years back. Accordingly, and in the absence of an appropriate Bench in SAT to hear the appeal now extending the interim relief already granted by this Appellate Tribunal while doing justice to the Applicants / Appellants would cause no harm or prejudice to SEBI or to public interest.
4. The Applicants / Appellants, while pressing for extending the interim relief relied on the judgment of Sham Sunder and Others vs State of Haryana, (1989) 4 SCC 630 and Jai Berham and Ors. vs Kedarnath Marwari andors. decided by the Privy Counsel on 19.06.1922 [MANU/PR/0085/1922] and submitted that there is no vicarious liability in criminal law; all partners are not liable for the offence of some partners and it is the duty of the Court to act rightly and fairly to all the parties concerned.
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