The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), in the first charge sheet it filed in the Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) case, has accused former chairman Ravi Parthasarathy and former vice-chairman Hari Sankaran, who used their power to manipulate the whole management of the company in favour of extending benefits to Siva Group promoted by C Sivasankaran.
“During the investigation, it was found that Ravi Parthasarathy and Hari Sankaran were the two persons on whom Sivasankaran was having great influence and these two officials connived with Sivasankaran and dominated the management of IFIN (IL&FS Financial Services Ltd) to conclude the transaction with Sivasankaran, which was against the interest of the company,” the SFIO said in its charge sheet, a copy of which was accessed by this paper.
According to the charge sheet, Ramesh C Bawa, as the managing director and CEO of IFIN, oversaw conclusion of the fraudulent activities.The SFIO filed its first charge sheet last week after investigating the fraud in IFIN. The document names 30 as accused, including the erstwhile top management of IL&FS and auditors.
The charge sheet said that the erstwhile top management members of the group’s financial services subsidiary IFIN of forming a “coterie” with its auditors and independent directors to defraud the company while running the business as their “personal fiefdom”.
The chargesheet said that the loans were disbursed through the abusive exercise of power by a coterie of Parthasarathy, Hari Sankaran, Arun Saha, Vaibhav Kapoor, Ramesh C Bawa and K Ramachandran, by adopting the fraudulent modus operandi. Sources said the SFIO’s first charge sheet concerns just one entity, IFIN, and the probe is already underway against the parent firm IL&FS and several other subsidiaries. The SFIO is likely to file charge sheet in other cases as well.
Members of former top management of IFIN have been charged with committing fraud with intent to injure the interest of the company, its shareholders and creditors, resulting in wrongful loss to the company, especially in loans sanctioned to Siva Group worth Rs 175 crore, violating all norms and overlooking the risk.
The charge sheet also said that Instead of protecting the interest of investors, Parthasarathy was “apologetic about taking time for finalising the loan sanction”.The probe agency said the financial statements prepared and filed by the company did not give a true and fair view of the state of affairs at the company, while the financial statements for 2010-11 to 2017-18 fiscals were not in compliance with the applicable accounting standards.
Apart from auditors BSR and Deloitte, which were charged along with audit partners Udayan Sen, Kalpesh Mehta and Sampath Ganesh, others on the list were audit committee members, independent directors, as well as Siva Group chairman and his group companies.
The charge sheet was filed after close inspection of accounts of about 400 entities, data collected from desktops and laptops seized from various IL&FS offices, e-mails extracted from IL&FS servers, RBI inspection reports, minutes of meetings and other similar documents.