As stock market booms, malpractices of Harshad, Ketan era are back: Harsh Goenka

MUMBAI: Billionaire businessman Harsh Goenka fears that a stock market scam is brewing that could be equated with the ones which were perpetrated by infamous market operators like Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh.
Goenka alleged that this time the scam may have its origin in Kolkata. In a post on X, Goenka on Saturday alleged that businessmen, especially from Kolkata, are cooking up books to inflate profits which in turn is driving up stock prices.
“With a booming stock market, all malpractices of Harshad Mehta/Ketan Parekh era are back primarily in Kolkata,” Goenka posted.”Promoters are inflating profits & in nexus with Gujarati-Marwari brokers driving their stock prices to unrealistic levels.” He did not elaborate. Goenka, who has about 18 lakh followers on X, also tagged finance ministry and markets regulator Sebi urging them to step in to investigate the scam before small investors suffered huge losses.
Spokespersons for both, finance ministry and Sebi, didn’t comment on the post.
Incidentally, Kolkata-born Goenka’s younger brother Sanjiv is one of the leading businessmen in Kolkata. And cigarette-to-hotels conglomerate ITC is the most-valued company that has its headquarters in the city. To a respondent to Goenka’s post who stated that it is mostly major steel houses (who engaged in such activities of inflating profits), Goenka agreed.