The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed an FIR against Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL) Executive Chairperson Rashmi Saluja and two other top officials of the company in a 2023 case pertaining to false allegations against the Burmans of the Dabur Group.

Based on the complaint of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has been probing a money laundering case related to Religare, the police have registered the case against Saluja, REL chief financial officer Nitin Aggarwal, general counsel Nishant Singhal, and shareholder Vaibhav Jalinder Gawali under 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code at Mumbai’s Matunga police station.

On August 23, ED officials searched the premises of Religare Enterprises’ top personnel, including Rashmi Saluja.

The feud between the Burmans and the top REL executives started in September 2023, when four firms owned by the Burman family acquired an additional 5.27 percent stake in REL, triggering a mandatory open offer, since the family already possessed a 21.54 percent stake in REL.

According to the substantial acquisition of shares and takeovers guidelines of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), any investor acquiring more than a 25 percent stake in any listed company triggers a mandatory open offer.

The Burmans initiated an open offer to acquire another 26 percent stake to consolidate their ownership over REL. But, a month later, the board of directors of Religare wrote a letter to SEBI, objecting to the open offer. They followed it up with 18 letters to oppose the takeover, saying that the Burmans were not ‘fit and proper’ to do so.

REL has four business arms—Religare Finvest and Religare Housing Development Finance Corp are NBFCs, Care Health Insurance operates in the health insurance segment, and Religare Broking is a retail stock brokerage controlled by the conglomerate and listed on both stock exchanges.

With the REL still refusing to submit the applications for approvals, the SEBI set a hard deadline for the firm to complete the process—12 July 2024. The tiff did not end there as the Religare management challenged the SEBI order before the Securities Appellate Tribunal, which upheld the order and asked the firm to complete the approval process by 22 July.

With inputs from agencies