Yesterday SEBI passed a 109-page interim order against Rajesh Exports and its promoter Rajesh Mehta. This is unlike anything we’ve seen in a while.
Rajesh Exports is a Bengaluru-based gold company, listed as RAJESHEXPO. They own Valcambi SA, one of the world’s largest gold refiners in Switzerland, and the Shubh Jewellers retail chain in India. On paper they’ve been reporting huge consolidated revenues, around Rs. 15,44,899 crore over FY21 to FY25.
It started with a shareholder complaint in March 2024 flagging large trade receivables that had been sitting unpaid for over two years. SEBI investigated, brought in BDO India as forensic auditors, and the company stonewalled both. Rajesh Exports refused to share basic things like ERP access, journal entries, and subsidiary data. They tried to use Swiss data protection laws as an excuse to block information about Valcambi. SEBI looked at those laws and rejected that argument outright. Swiss data protection covers individuals, not corporate financial records.
So what did the investigation actually find?
About 97-99% of Rajesh Exports’ consolidated revenues came from overseas subsidiaries, almost all of it supposedly from Valcambi SA. But when SEBI compared Valcambi’s own audited financials, audited by KPMG in Switzerland, against what Rajesh Exports was reporting, the numbers don’t match at all. Valcambi’s actual audited revenues over this entire period were about Rs. 3,027 crore. Rajesh Exports was reporting Rs. 15,18,413 crore from subsidiaries. That’s a difference of Rs. 15,15,385 crore. Nearly 99.80% of all subsidiary revenues cannot be verified.
The company’s explanation was that a holding entity called Global Gold Refineries AG was recognising the full gross value of gold transactions, while Valcambi only booked its processing fee.
SEBI’s response was Global Gold Refineries is a holding company with no operations at all. How can it be booking revenues that the actual operating company, Valcambi, doesn’t even recognise in its own audited books? There’s no accounting standard in the world that supports this.
The standalone financials are arguably even more brazen. Between FY22 and FY24, between 66% and 86% of Rajesh Exports’ own sales and purchases were recorded against one single entity, Affluence Shares and Stocks, a SEBI registered stockbroker. When SEBI contacted Affluence directly, they said Rajesh Exports was never their client.
What had actually happened is that Rajesh Mehta was personally trading gold derivatives through his own account at Affluence. Rajesh Exports sent him Rs. 7.45 crore as margin money, he lost Rs. 3.5 crore of it, and the rest came back.
But those personal trades done in his own name were recorded in Rajesh Exports’ books as the company’s own business transactions. Rs. 11,487 crore in sales and Rs. 11,488 crore in purchases, all of it fictitious.
Top of that, Rs. 867 crore of forex fluctuations and Rs. 204 crore of interest income from fixed deposits were both incorrectly booked as revenue from operations instead of being shown separately. And there were fake purchases worth Rs. 59 crore from two entities, one of which was undergoing insolvency and had nothing to do with gold trading.
There’s also a problem with how old receivables were cleared. Rajesh Exports had large amounts sitting unpaid from four overseas buyers for years. Between FY23 and FY24, Rs. 2,914 crore of these were suddenly written off through netting arrangements with trade payables. When SEBI tried to verify these deals, one counterparty’s email bounced permanently, another party’s trade licence belonged to a completely different company, and some of the invoices used as supporting documents were from FY 2012-13. None of this was disclosed in the financial statements.
Then there’s the money that was routed through personal accounts. Between April 2020 and September 2025, Rs. 338.90 crore went from Rajesh Exports to Rajesh Mehta’s personal bank accounts. Rs. 232.44 crore came back. After adjusting for known items like a High Court deposit and dividends, about Rs. 106 crore is still unexplained. Another Rs. 21.25 crore went to his son Siddharth Mehta, who had no role in the company at all. And Rs. 565.88 crore went to Elest Pvt Ltd, another Rajesh Mehta entity, with Rs. 215 crore not returning. None of these transactions were disclosed as related party transactions, none were approved by the Audit Committee, and the company’s own MD and CFO said they had no idea most of these transfers even happened.
The stock peaked at Rs. 1,028 in February 2023 with a market cap of around Rs. 30,365 crore. It’s now around Rs. 108.
SEBI estimates that public investors have lost approximately Rs. 12,725 crore in wealth.
For now, Rajesh Mehta has been barred from trading in Rajesh Exports shares. The company has 30 days to provide the pending documents and must cooperate with a new forensic auditor.
This is an interim order based on prima facie findings, not a final verdict. Rajesh Exports and Rajesh Mehta have 21 days to respond and can ask for a personal hearing. But if even half of what’s documented here holds up, this is one of the biggest corporate fraud cases Indian markets have ever seen.
