A whistleblower has filed a criminal complaint on May 23 alleging cheating and fraud, corruption and laundering of bank loans worth Rs 12,000 crore by key managerial personnel of Amtek Auto, allegedly in conspiracy with employees of several banks.
The complaint, which has been sent to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and marked to the Prime Minister’s Office, seeks the initiation of a criminal investigation against Amtek Auto’s promoter Arvind Dham, 27 of the company’s employees, resolution professional (RP) Dinkar Venkatsubramanian, Vivek Aggarwal (partner), Ernst & Young (EY), which authored a forensic audit report of Amtek Auto’s transactions, and unnamed officials of IDBI Bank.
The name of the complainant is Jaskaran Chawla, who is an advocate at the Delhi high court. FE has reviewed a copy of the complaint.
Emails sent to Amtek Auto, Dham, Venkatsubramanian, Aggarwal, EY and a representative for IDBI Bank did not elicit responses till the time of going to press. The May 23 complaint names 27 employees of the Amtek Group who were allegedly used by the Dham family to create a ‘benami’ structure in order to move, park and siphon off funds. It further seeks a criminal investigation against unnamed employees of IDBI Bank as they allegedly failed to recall loans despite deviations from the terms of a no-objection certificate (NOC) issued by the bank in 2016.
According to the complaint, Venkatsubramanian had approached Ernst & Young to review the transactions made by Amtek Auto from January 7, 2015 to July 24, 2017.
Venkatsubramanian wanted to determine if any of these transactions were preferential or undervalued transactions and whether they potentially defrauded creditors. The auditor produced his report on March 13, 2018.
“Though this report covered a limited time period between 2015-17, it still revealed glaring instances of cheating, and siphoning off public funds,” the complaint states.
It further says that despite clear indications of swindling of public funds by Amtek Auto through 127 related entities, the forensic auditors failed to obtain and scrutinise the balance sheets, account books and banking documentations of these related parties. According to the complaint, after receiving the forensic audit report, the resolution professional failed to exercise his independent judgment in reporting the economic offences committed by Amtek Auto to investigative agencies or to take any steps against the potential related parties.
The complainant has asked the CBI to initiate domestic seizures of the bank accounts of the Dham family, the ‘benaamidars’ named in the complaint and all potentially related parties of Amtek Auto. They have also sought an investigation into the movement of funds into foreign territories.
Amtek Auto was one of the companies named on the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) first list of 12 large non-performing assets (NPAs) mandated for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). As per documents put out during the course of the resolution process, Amtek Auto owed its financial creditors Rs 12,322 crore. Its group companies Castex Technologies and Metalyst Forgings owe lenders another Rs 11,150 crore.
