Shares of gold refiner and jewelry exporter Rajesh Exports Ltd (REL) are under severe pressure following a massive regulatory crackdown. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued an explosive interim order on June 3, 2026, alleging that the company fabricated or misrepresented a staggering ₹15.15 lakh crore ($158.3 billion) in revenue between FY21 and FY25.

However, company Founder and Chairman Rajesh Mehta has fiercely pushed back, claiming the entire scandal boils down to an “accounting misunderstanding” and lost paperwork.

The 400 GB Document Defense: “SEBI Lost the Files”

In a detailed response to the regulator’s order, Rajesh Mehta stated that the company has already shared an enormous digital paper trail with SEBI that the regulator has simply failed to track down.

“We had given them 300–400 GB of documents, running into lakhs of pages,” Mehta told PTI. “I think they have not been able to find the correct documents. The whole confusion has happened there.”

Mehta promised that Rajesh Exports would compile and resubmit the entire 400 GB digital archive within 15 days to completely clear the company’s name.

The Core Debate: Revenue vs. EBITDA

According to Rajesh Exports, SEBI’s eye-watering headline figure of ₹15.15 lakh crore is a fundamental math error where investigators confused Gross Profit (EBITDA) with top-line Revenue.

• The Bullion Argument: Mehta explained that in high-volume, thin-margin gold refining, a business may buy gold for ₹100 and sell it for ₹101. While the full ₹101 represents the actual top-line revenue, the ₹1 represents the gross profit (EBITDA).
• The Alleged Mistake: The company claims SEBI looked at the subsidiary numbers, took the EBITDA, and accidentally labeled it as the total revenue. The company further pointed out that the massive revenues primarily originate from its Swiss subsidiary, Valcambi SA—the world’s largest gold refinery—which processed roughly 3,000 metric tons of gold over those five years.

Mehta also questioned the logic behind faking a top-line: “No company will inflate their revenues. If anybody wants to inflate, they will inflate their bottom line… an inflation of top line is absolutely no use for anybody.”

What SEBI Actually Found: Red Flags Beyond the Headline

Despite the company’s “communication gap” explanation, SEBI’s interim order outlines severe structural anomalies that triggered a deeper forensic audit:

1. The Missing Subsidiary Records

The probe began after a shareholder complained about large trade receivables left outstanding for more than two years. SEBI found that 97% to 99% of Rajesh Exports’ consolidated revenue came from overseas subsidiaries. However, the regulator alleged the company failed to provide verifiable records or place audited financials of these critical step-down entities in the public domain.

2. The Unverified Broker Trades

SEBI flagged suspicious multi-crore transactions with an entity named Affluence. While Rajesh Exports logged extensive trading loops with them, Affluence formally told SEBI it had never had Rajesh Exports as a client and had never executed a transaction on its behalf. Instead, SEBI found those trades mapped directly to Rajesh Mehta’s personal derivatives trading account.

3. Fund Routing and Account Mimicry

The interim order explicitly called out an alarming pattern of routing corporate money through personal promoter accounts, misutilizing funds in promoter-controlled entities, and obscuring the resulting cash trails.

The Immediate Fallouts

While Rajesh Exports stresses that this is an interim order based on “suspicious aspects” rather than final, absolute findings, the scale of the alleged ₹15.15 lakh crore misrepresentation marks this as one of the most significant corporate governance battles in modern Indian history.