NEW DELHI: The ABG Shipyard’s Rs 23,000-crore loan fraud spanned over a decade, and the company promoters and directors have been diverting resources from the company through fraudulent means over a long period of time with the help of several shell companies.
During the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP), resolution professional Sundaresh Bhatt presented several documents in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) of fraudulent or preferential transactions undertaken by the promoters of the company.
The biggest of those transactions involve companies like Varada Seven Pte, Bansal Investment and Trading Private Ltd and ABG Shipyard Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABG Shipyard transferred Rs 421 crore between Oct 2012 and Sept 2014 to Singapore-based Varada as loans through an account in Royal Bank of Scotland. Varada was incorporated on Aug 24, 2012 in Singapore. The company is no longer in operation.
The Rishi Agarwal-promoted ABG Shipyard had invested $67 million by way of subscription of preference share in its wholly-owned subsidiary ABG Shipyard Singapore, which was incorporated in 2010.
ABG Shipyard also entered into another large fraudulent transaction involving Rs 325 crore with an entity called Banal Investments and Trading Private Ltd between April 2015 and March 2016.
Banal was a group company of ABG Shipyard involved in sale and purchases of shares, debentures and bonds, and it was struck off from RoC on April 28, 2017.
The company reported no revenues in 2011-2 and 2012-13, and it had a negative net worth of Rs 19 lakh.
ABG Shipyard had advanced Rs 97.18 crore to Nor Crane & Winch Private Ltd (NCWPL) in March 2013. The Company was struck off from RoC and it had made no earnings in 2009-10 and 2010-11.
It filed no financial statement from 2011-12 onwards. Besides, ex directors of NCWPL were employees of ABG Group companies.
Similarly, ABG had made advance payment of Rs 64 crore to its vendor Mahavir Distributor between April 21, 2014 to April 28, 2014 through a bank account in ING Vysya Bank.
Then there were suspect transactions between ABG Shipyard and ABG International Private Ltd involving Rs 34.66 between Sept 16, 2015 and April 16, 2016, and that with ABG Resources Pvt Ltd involving Rs 16 crore between 26 October 2015 and 6 April 2017.
Documents presented in NCLT
During the insolvency resolution process, resolution professional Sundaresh Bhatt presented several documents in the NCLT of fraudulent or preferential transactions undertaken by the promoters of the company.