SEBI Has ₹761 Crore For Cheated Investors. Last Year It Paid Out ₹0

SEBI has ₹761 crore sitting in a fund built from money taken from cheated investors. Last year, ₹0 went back to them. There is a fund in India that almost no investor has heard of. It is called the Investor Protection and Education Fund - the IPEF. It was created by SEBI's own regulations in 2009, and it exists for exactly two purposes: to compensate investors who have been cheated, and to educate investors so they don't get cheated in the first place. As of March 2025, that fund holds approximately ₹761 crore. Add the investor protection funds of the exchanges and depositories, and the number crosses ₹4,225 crore. In that same year, the compensation paid out to cheated investors from the IPEF was zero. Not one rupee. And of the ₹761 crore lying in the fund, the amount spent on investor education and awareness was ₹2.69 crore. That is 0.35% of the corpus. This is not one bad year. In 2022-23 the fund held ₹240 crore and spent ₹11.9 crore. In 2023-24 it held ₹533 crore and spent ₹2.8 crore. In 2024-25 it held ₹761 crore and spent ₹2.69 crore. This video asks one question, and does not let go of it: whose money is this, and where is it? What this video covers: We start with Karvy Stock Broking - 2.43 lakh active clients, 7,445 complaints, ₹2,000 crore raised against clients' pledged shares without telling them. SEBI acted. An order was passed. Karvy was declared a defaulter. And years later, many of those investors are still waiting. We then walk through what the law actually says. SEBI's IPEF Regulations, 2009 state the money "shall be utilised" for investor protection and education - but nowhere do they set a minimum. Disgorged money is ringfenced for the investors it belonged to, and they have seven years to claim it - but nobody is told their money is waiting. We ask whether returning money to investors is simply too difficult - and then we answer it. In FY2024, the US SEC distributed $345 million to harmed investors. That was its weakest year since 2016; the year before it distributed $930 million, and since 2021 it has returned more than $2.7 billion. The UK's FCA secured an estimated £442.3 million for investors and consumers in 2024-25. Hong Kong went further and separated compensation and education into two different institutions so neither buries the other. Then we ask where the money in the IPEF comes from. The answer is uncomfortable: your pocket. Asmita Patel (~₹90 crore), Premium Capital Research (₹1,16,51,387), Wockhardt (₹14,23,074), a front-running case (₹1,67,52,329), and Karvy. Different frauds, different worlds - and the same destination. The fund fills up with money taken from investors, and then it sits there. What we did about it? This is not only a video. An RTI has been filed with SEBI, and a formal representation has been sent to SEBI's leadership, including the Chairman's office. Three things have been asked for, and none of them cost money or require a new law: One. Every year, SEBI should publish not just how much it recovered, but how many investors actually received compensation. One number, in public, annually. As long as that number stays hidden, nobody is accountable. Two. Where SEBI recovers money and the affected investors are known and on record, SEBI itself should publicly invite them to claim it. Today, that duty often falls on the very person who defrauded them. Three. A fixed minimum share of the fund should be spent, every year, on investor education. Not 0.35%. If something has gone wrong with you Two free, official routes exist. SCORES, SEBI's own grievance portal, where you can file a complaint directly. And SmartODR, where a dispute between you and a broker or advisor is resolved online through a defined process. Have you been scammed? File Complaint here - https://aseemjuneja.in/ Check Stock Pathshala for LIVE classes and Webinars now: https://www.stockpathshala.com/pricing Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codeclinic.stockpathshala&hl=en_IN&pli=1 Buy Fraud Free Book - https://www.amazon.in/FRAUD-FREE-Outsmart-Scammers-Money/dp/9370032088?s=bazaar 00:00 – 01:43 - Introduction 01:43 – 03:06 - Why the Investor Protection Fund Exists 03:06 – 04:47 - Money Inside the Fund 04:47 – 06:19 - SEBI Rules vs Reality 06:19 – 07:33 - Questions We Asked SEBI 07:33 – 08:41 - The Sahara Refund Case 08:41 – 09:45 - How Other Countries Handle Refunds 09:45 – 11:21 - Where the Fund Money Comes From 11:21 – 12:35 - What SEBI Should Change 12:35 – 13:41- What Investors Should Do