The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has banned Anil Ambani and three partners from the capital markets for allegedly stealing funds from Reliance Home Finance (RHFL). Regulators have also restricted them from working with any public company, stock market intermediary or any public company that intends to raise capital.

The restrictions will remain in place until further notice, Sebi said in an interim order instructing Ambani and several others to “show reasons” why further action and investigation should not be taken against them.

“This misconduct by Noticee no. 2 (Anil Ambani) as the company/group chairman, first with the fraudulent intent of the company’s top management, to transfer the company’s borrowed funds to genuine third-party borrowers to various originators People’s Vault Group entities disguised as a series of false GPCs (General Corporate Loans) and then cover up the losses and NPAs caused by such deals by concealing the company’s actual financial health from shareholders and the general investing public who will never know RHFL of their true financial status, by looking at the fabricated books submitted to them through the stock exchange,” the Sebi order said.

In a letter dated April 18, 2019, auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers highlighted certain observations and sought responses from company executives and the audit committee. The auditors highlighted that the loan amount disbursed by RHFL under the GPC loan has doubled from Rs 9,000 crore as at March 31, 2018 to about Rs 7,900 crore as at March 31, 2019.

PwC also highlighted that borrowers have negative net worth and have limited or no income and profits.

Investigations revealed that several of the borrowers were RHFL group companies.

Another forensic audit was conducted by a consortium of RHFL lenders led by Bank of Baroda.

The forensic auditor observed that RHFL disbursed Rs 14,577 crore as GPC loans to numerous entities, of which Rs 12,487 crore was disbursed to 47 potentially indirectly related entities (PILE).

Another report highlighted that 150 loan cases fell under the PILE category between FY 2017 and FY 2019. Of these, there are still 100 loan cases totalling Rs 8,884 crore in RHFL’s books.

Sebi also launched its own investigation, which found several irregularities in the loan disbursement process, as well as collusion among senior officials to siphon funds from the RHFL.

“To sum up, all of the above notifiers have worked together through complicity with the appropriate help and abetting of other notifiers to translate predetermined plans into action, resulting in the withdrawal of substantial funds from the accounts of the RHFL, a significant part of which must be Declared as NPA shortly after the sanctions,” noted Sebi Order of full-time member SK Mohanty.

Complete News Source: Business Standard