Zerick Dastur Advocates & Solicitors has filed an appeal before the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) on behalf of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) challenging the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) order of last week banning the Big 4 consultancy from auditing work in India.

Zerick Dastur Advocates & Solicitors was set up by former J Sagar Associates (JSA) Mumbai partner Zerick Dastur in February 2017.

Dastur has briefed senior counsel Janak Dwarkadas as lead counsel, together with senior counsel Shyam Mehta and ex-JSA securities partner Somasekhar Sundaresan, who had become a full-time independent counsel around a year before Dastur left JSA.

The SEBI-PwC war is a rather old one: nine years ago the Satyam scam happened and SEBI had issued a show cause notice that they had the power to act against auditors of listed companies. PwC had challenged the jurisdiction of SEBI to act against chartered accountants and auditors acting in a professional capacity at that time before the Bombay high court.

The high court came up with a ruling that SEBI can proceed that only where there is mens rea and criminality.

Eight years on, in January 2017, the Supreme Court held that SEBI had to decide the matter within six months.

SEBI held its hearings and eventually handed down its ban order against PwC.

It is understood that the present SAT appeal challenges that ban order on the basis that it is violative of the Bombay high court standard that SEBI would have to establish criminality before proceeding.

Picture by Bjorn Erik Pedersen