Chapter V — Enforcement, Inspection and Appeals

IFSCA's inspection, penalty and direction powers, and the Section 27 appeal route to the Securities Appellate Tribunal.

Inspection and inquiry

IFSCA can inspect the books, records and affairs of any regulated entity, call for information, and conduct inquiries into suspected contravention of the Act, rules, regulations or any direction — broadly mirroring the domestic-regulator inspection toolkit but exercised by one authority across all financial-sector categories present in the IFSC.

Penalties and directions

Contravention can attract monetary penalty, suspension or cancellation of registration, and directions to cease an activity or make good an investor/counterparty loss — the exact penalty ceiling and procedure is set out activity-by-activity in the relevant regulation rather than as one uniform IFSCA-Act-wide penalty schedule.

Section 27 — appeal to SAT

A person aggrieved by an IFSCA order may appeal to the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) — the same appellate forum used for SEBI orders — within the limitation period fixed in the section, and thereafter to the Supreme Court on a substantial question of law under Section 28. Using SAT (rather than a newly created IFSC-specific tribunal) keeps IFSC appellate practice inside the existing securities-appeal jurisprudence and procedure.

Interplay with criminal law

Where a contravention also constitutes an offence under another law (e.g. FEMA, the Companies Act, or a criminal statute for fraud), IFSCA's administrative action proceeds independently of — and does not substitute for — a parallel criminal or enforcement-agency proceeding under that other law.

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