CHENNAI: Less than a week after his adopted son claimed that he was unfit to run the family’s businesses , the ‘Raja of Chettinad’ M A M Ramaswamy came out with a scathing declaration —M A M R Muthiah alias S Ayyapan had been disowned. And all of the family’s prodigious assets left under Ramaswamy’s control would now go into two charitable trusts.
“He will not get a penny of the remaining assets that I still control. He is not my son and I want nothing to do with him,” said a fuming Ramaswamy on Tuesday. Sitting by his side was his cousin and Chairman Emeritus of Southern Petrochemical Industries Limited, A C Muthiah, who Ramaswamy indirectly but effectively named the custodian of those assets.
Assets that, according to Ramaswamy’s lawyers, are already being transferred into two newly formed charitable trusts—the Chettinad Charitable Trust and M A M Ramaswamy Chettiar Trust. While Ramaswamy will be the sole beneficiary of both and will sit on the boards, also a trustee will be A C Muthiah, with whom Ramaswamy had a running spat over business interests in the 1990s—a sure sign of the family closing ranks against the outsider.
But while the disowning has been public and all traditional rites, of immense importance to the tightly knit Chettiar community, have been adhered to, the legal standpoint is all that matters. Because, as per legal experts, the only way to do what they have started to do is by annulling the nearly 20-year-old adoption—not an easy task by any measure and one that, sources in the family say, M A M R Muthiah is going to fight tooth and nail for.
“We are preparing for the annulment and all processes are in place. We will move the High Court within a month,” said Ramaswamy’s lawyer A Nagarajan. However, even he acknowledged that it would be a long and arduous fight. “This(annulment) will not get resolved anytime soon, it’s a long and complicated procedure,” he admitted.
The assets under question, excluding the Chettinad Cements holdings, is likely to be several thousand crores, according to sources. A large part of this is held by Ramaswamy, who also retains a 22 per cent stake in Chettinad Cements. However, a trust, in which Muthiah alias Ayyapan is also a trustee, holds substantial assets. “Almost all of this came through the transfer of my wife’s holdings to him,” said Ramaswamy.
Also registered this week, which saw Ramaswamy going all out against his adopted son, was a complaint by Ramaswamy against Muthiah for the fracas that happened on May 24 when henchmen of both father and son clashed in their Chettinad Palace residence. The sections under which M A M R Muthiah has been booked include sections 148 (rioting), 427 (mischief), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt ), 506(ii) (criminal intimidation) and 307(attempt to murder) of Indian Penal Code (IPC). Adding to the Group’s misery was an Income Tax raid on Wednesday, when 38 locations in three states associated with the Group were examined by the department.