SEBI Employees Accuse Top Leadership Under Madhabi Puri Buch of Using “Harsh and Unprofessional language”

Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) employees have accused the chairperson, Madhabi Puri Buch, of promoting a toxic work culture under her leadership. The employees of the market regulator had written a letter to the finance ministry last month, according to the Economic Times report. The letter was signed by nearly 50 per cent of the top-level employees. 

The five-page letter titled ‘Grievances of SEBI officers-A Call for Respect’ was sent to the ministry of finance on August 6. In the letter, the employees complained about the senior management’s “harsh and unprofessional language” used for the members, keeping track of “minute-by-minute movement” and imposing “unrealistic work targets with changing goalposts”. The letter was written reportedly after the regulator failed to resolve their complaints. 

The market regulator has nearly 1,000 officers of grade A and above; nearly half of them have signed the letter. The letter addressed to the ministry of finance is perhaps the first of its kind, where the employees have flagged about the toxic work culture and lack of work-life balance. 

“...the senior management seems to conveniently forget to also adopt best-in-class man management, leadership, and motivation methods towards its employees. This method of leadership, wherein employees are browbeaten into submission with shouting, using harsh and unprofessional language, has to stop,” the employees reportedly said in the letter. 

The matter has been addressed by the regulator. “Engagement with employees for resolution of their issues is a continuous process,” said SEBI in its response to queries raised by ET. 

This isn’t the first time the SEBI chief has found herself in troubled waters. Recently, her name surfaced in the Adani-Hindenburg controversy. The American short-seller Hindenburg Research, in a report published by it on August 10, 2024, has accused SEBI Chief and her husband Dhaval Buch in Adani Group’s offshore funds scandal. 

“...the current SEBI chairperson and her husband, Dhaval Buch, had hidden stakes in the exact same obscure offshore Bermuda and Mauritius funds, found in the same complex nested structure, used by Vinod Adani,” said the Hindenburg report.