Indian Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha vowed Saturday to fully probe claims that crooked bankers and brokers triggered a stockmarket crisis but ruled out the involvement of a market regulator in the fraud which has shattered investor confidence.
It comes a day after federal detectives began to question a bank chairman over his links with a powerful broker who is accused of defrauding state banks to artificially jack up share prices and then trigger a payments crisis.
"We are not going to deflect from our determination to go to the bottom of the whole thing. I cannot give any conclusion or opinion until we look at a report which is expected by mid-April," he said of a probe by the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
Sinha asserted that market watchdog SEBI was not to blame for the storm which has been raging in India's financial and stock markets for weeks over allegations of insider trading and rampant price rigging by a coterie of powerful brokers, bankers and market officials.
"If at all there are any charges against SEBI it can be only that of slackness on their part in taking timely action and that too will come out in the report," the finance minister told reporters in New Delhi.
Victims of the chaos have accused the SEBI of looking the other way while the markets swindle was taking place.
Sinha declined to comment on the effect of the stock market turmoil on India's economic growth, but said industrial slowdown has already had an impact on the already limping economy.
On Friday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began questioning Madhavpura Mercantile Co-operative Bank chairman Ramesh Parekh over his involvement in the swindle -- NEW DELHI (AFP)
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