On June 3, 2026, India’s Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI) issued an interim order that, in its sheer magnitude, invites sombre comparison with the darkest chapters of India’s financial history. The regulator alleged that Rajesh Exports Limited had engaged in a systematic misrepresentation of consolidated revenues amounting to approximately ₹15.15 lakh crore (nearly $158 billion) over the five fiscal years spanning 2020–21 to 2024–25. The alleged inflation encompassed a staggering 99.80 per cent of revenues attributed to its overseas subsidiaries which was routed principally through Switzerland-based Valcambi SA. This is a globally renowned gold refinery that the company had acquired in 2015 for $400 million. If the allegations are ultimately substantiated, this would not merely constitute the largest financial fraud in independent India’s history rather it would represent a categorical failure of every institutional safeguard that the Republic has erected to protect investor capital, public wealth and market integrity.

To appreciate the gravity of what is alleged, one must situate these numbers within the continuum of India’s most notorious financial scandals. The Harshad Mehta securities scam of 1992 which convulsed Dalal Street and shook the very foundations of the Bombay Stock Exchange, involved fraudulent transactions estimated at approximately ₹4,000 crore. This is a figure that, when adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity translates to roughly $3 to $3.5 billion in today’s terms. The Ketan Parekh scam of the late 1990s, which exploited circular trading and bank credit to artificially inflate the prices of technology and media stocks is estimated to have caused losses in the range of ₹40,000 crore. The Satyam Computer Services fraud of 2009, which is widely characterised as India’s answer to Enron, involved falsification of accounts to the tune of ₹7,136 crore. And Nirav Modi’s audacious exploitation of the Letters of Undertaking mechanism at Punjab National Bank yielded fraudulent gains estimated at over ₹13,500 crore. The alleged Rajesh Exports misrepresentation, by contrast, runs to ₹15.15 lakh crore. This is a figure that dwarfs the cumulative quantum of all these precedents and represents approximately 5 per cent of India’s nominal GDP. The comparison is not merely illustrative. It is structurally terrifying.

SEBI’s order details the architecture of the alleged misrepresentation with clinical precision. The regulator found that between 97 and 99 per cent of Rajesh........

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