Some business stories feel almost too dramatic to be real. A tiny workshop that grows into one of the biggest names in Indian gold, a stock that touches ₹1,000-plus, and then, decades later, a regulator's order that wipes out most of its value in a matter of days.
That's the story of Rajesh Exports Limited.
Before we get into it, one important note: everything below about the alleged fraud comes from SEBI's interim order, which is not a final verdict. Rajesh Exports and its founder, Rajesh Mehta, have denied the allegations and say they will contest them. Keep that in mind as you read — this is a story that's still being written.
Chapter 1: The Rise
It started small. In 1989, brothers Rajesh Mehta and Prashant Mehta, from a middle-class Jain family with no big business connections, set up a 10-person jewellery manufacturing unit in a Bangalore garage. No shortcuts, just hard work.
Within a year they'd opened their first retail outlet, and by 1995 the business was formally incorporated as Rajesh Exports Limited.
The real growth came in the 2000s and 2010s. A bigger manufacturing facility came up in 2001. The company raised money through foreign currency bonds in 2007 and again in 2011. And then came the moment that put Rajesh Exports on the global map: in 2015, it acquired Valcambi SA, a Swiss company and the world's largest gold refiner, for $400 million.
The stock hit an all-time high of ₹1,028 around this period. On paper, this was a homegrown Indian company that had gone from a garage to owning a piece of the global gold industry.
There was always one quirk in the business model, though. Rajesh Exports dealt in massive revenues — lakhs of crores of rupees a year — but on wafer-thin margins of around 0.5–1%. High revenue, low profit. That's a normal feature of gold trading and refining businesses. But it's also the kind of business where it's genuinely hard for an outsider to tell whether the numbers are real.
Chapter 2: The Slide Nobody Fully Explained
From that 2015 peak, the stock started drifting down. ₹1,028 became ₹500, then ₹200, then dipped below ₹100 well before any scandal broke.
A few things stood out to anyone paying attention:
- Margins stayed thin, year after year.
- Debt kept building, and cash flow looked weak.
- Foreign institutional investors gradually trimmed their holdings, while retail investors kept buying in.
In hindsight, a shareholder had actually flagged concerns as early as March 2024, pointing out that the company had large trade receivables that hadn't been collected in over two years. That complaint eventually led SEBI to open a formal investigation later that year, with forensic auditors brought in to go through the books.
Chapter 3: What SEBI Says It Found
On June 3, 2026, SEBI released a lengthy interim order over 100 pages laying out its findings so far. Here's the core of what it alleges:
Revenue that couldn't be verified. Between FY2021 and FY2025, SEBI says almost all of Rajesh Exports' reported revenue 97 to 99% of it was attributed to overseas subsidiaries, mainly linked to Valcambi SA in Switzerland. But when auditors tried to match this against Valcambi's own audited numbers, the figures didn't add up. According to SEBI, roughly ₹15.15 lakh crore of reported revenue over those five years couldn't be independently confirmed.
A trading partner that says it never traded. SEBI examined transactions worth around ₹11,487 crore in sales and ₹11,488 crore in purchases with an entity called Affluence Shares and Stocks. When investigators asked Affluence about it, the company said it had no business relationship with Rajesh Exports at all, any dealings were with Rajesh Mehta personally. Rajesh Exports has said these trades were routed through Mehta's personal account because of ongoing litigation involving MCX, but SEBI says this wasn't backed by proper documentation or board approval.
Money moving into personal accounts. SEBI alleges that ₹339 crore moved from company accounts to accounts linked to Mehta (part of which, ₹232 crore, was later returned), and that in total around ₹926 crore was routed through transactions connected to him without board or audit committee sign-off.
Other flagged items. The order also points to money moved to Elest, an EV and battery company started by the Mehta brothers, and to ₹1,035 crore supposedly invested in African gold mining assets that forensic auditors could not verify actually exist.
Based on all this, SEBI estimates that shareholders have collectively lost around ₹12,726 crore in wealth. As an immediate step, it has barred Rajesh Mehta from buying, selling, or dealing in the company's shares, and ordered a fresh forensic audit.
Chapter 4: What the Company Says
This is the part that often gets left out of the more sensational retellings, and it matters.
Rajesh Mehta has firmly denied the allegations. He's said the interim order stems from a misunderstanding, not fraud, and that the company had already shared 300–400 GB of records with SEBI — so much data, he argues, that some documents may simply have been hard to locate rather than deliberately withheld. On the Affluence transactions specifically, he's called them genuine trades spread over four years and denied that any personal account was used to hide anything.
The company has said it won't challenge the interim order and will cooperate fully with the fresh forensic audit, expressing confidence that a full review of the documents will clear things up.
So, to be clear: this is currently a dispute between a regulator's prima facie findings and a company's strong denial. Nothing has been finally proven either way.
Chapter 5: The Stock's Reaction
Markets don't wait for final verdicts. The stock had already fallen sharply from its highs even before the SEBI order down over 50% from its December 2025 peak of around ₹239. After the order came out, it hit the 5% lower circuit for several consecutive trading sessions, before staging a brief bounce.
As things stand, Rajesh Exports trades in a fraction of its former range, and its market value has shrunk dramatically from its peak years.
Chapter 6: What Happens Next
An interim order is just that interim. A few things need to happen before this story has an ending:
- The fresh forensic audit needs to be completed and reviewed.
- Rajesh Exports and Mehta get the chance to formally respond to every allegation.
- SEBI will then issue a final order, which could range from a clean chit, to financial penalties, to a longer trading ban, or worse, depending on what the evidence shows.
- Separately, India's audit regulator (NFRA) is expected to look into the role played by the company's statutory auditors, who signed off on these numbers for years.
The Bigger Lesson
Whatever the final outcome turns out to be, this case is already a useful reminder for anyone investing in the stock market: a company that shows huge revenue but very thin margins, heavy dependence on hard-to-verify overseas units, and large related-party dealings is worth a closer look well before a regulator has to step in and ask the same questions.
This account is based on SEBI's interim order dated June 3, 2026, and subsequent public statements from the company and its founder. The investigation is ongoing, and the allegations described here have not been finally adjudicated.
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