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MUMBAI: Five of the nine defaulting members on the troubled commodity bourse NSEL did not have adequate commodity stocks in their warehouses even as they traded in hundreds of crores worth of contracts, which led to a crisis worth about Rs 5,600 crore.

NSEL said on Monday it is investigating the matter relating to Ark Imports, Lotus Refineries, N K Proteins, Vimladevi Agrotech and Yathuri Associates.

Similar investigations are expected to start on the other four defaulters: Loil Overseas Foods, NCS Sugars, Spin Cot Textiles and Tavishi Enterprises. These nine defaulting companies together owe about Rs 83 crore to NSEL investors, which they failed to pay last week.

"The exchange has initiated case for investigation against five defaulting members who did not have adequate commodities in the warehouses, which is against the mechanism specified in the Exchange circulars. Non-delivery of commodities or its withdrawal is a breach of faith and breach of contractual arrangements," an NSEL release said. It also said NSEL will also take similar recourse for other defaulting members who are not cooperating.

In a related development, members of NSEL Investors Forum, a body of investors who are to receive money from the exchange, met FMC chairman RameshAbhishek, chairman, FMC, the commodity market regulator, and requested for a time-bound settlement plan from the exchange. Abhishek told the NSEL Investors Forum that the regulator was considering decla ring the promoter of NSEL, Jignesh Shah, not fit and proper to operate exchanges.