PACL Refund: Sebi answers this important question of Pearls investors

Investors of PACL can submit their applications seeking claims till July 31, with RM Lodha committee extending the deadline. The deadline for submitting applications was to end on April 30. However, many PACL investors are still searching the answer of their one query about refund and acknowledgement slip. Here is the answer to the question by SEBI:-

Q: In case original documents (bond certificates and/ or receipts) have been surrendered to PACL and investor has only acknowledgement issued by PACL, can he/she apply for refund? Can such acknowledgement slip be uploaded in lieu of PACL certificate while applying for refund? If investor has availed loan from PACL Ltd. after submitting all the documents to PACL, how to apply for refund in such a scenario?

A: In the current process of receiving claim applications, the investor submitting a claim application should be in possession of the original bond certificate and original outstanding receipt(s) of payment, and shall upload the scanned copy of the bond certificate along with the scanned copies of the outstanding receipt(s). Accordingly, to submit a claim application, any desirous investor shall have to upload the scanned copies of the above documents and be in possession of the respective original documents. For greater clarity, please refer to the refund video. The Committee has not envisaged any payments against any acknowledgement issued by PACL at this stage.

In February this year, the committee had decided to receive claims from all investors having outstanding claims with PACL after it completed the process of refunding to the investors whose total outstanding amount was up to Rs 2,500.

The committee headed by retired Justice RM Lodha was set up by Sebi following a Supreme Court order for selling the properties of PACL and using the sale proceeds to refund the investors. The ruling came after it was found that PACL had illegally collected around Rs 60,000 crore from the public, mainly in the name of agriculture and real estate businesses and the firm failed to refund the investors.