Responding to a PIL, Bombay High Court on Wednesday decided to constitute a 3 member committee to sell the properties of HDIL, a company which is said to own major chunk of stressed loans of the beleaguered PMC Bank.
The High Court observed that the Committee would be headed by a retired judge Mr S Radhakrishnan who will have the right to choose the two other members. The Committee will first sell the encumbered properties of HDIL and would see if it equals the loan amount due to the Company, reports the daily Economic Times.
High Court observation also included the fact that if this amount is not enough then the properties of HDIL Promoters- the duo of father and son would be valued and sold.
The advocate of Wadhawans however says that the worth of encumbered properties is about Rs 11000 crore while HDIL owes only Rs 4355 crore, as mentioned in the FIR filed by EoW.
Bombay High Court also ordered shifting of Wadhwans from jail to their home where jail guards would keep a vigil on them. Wadhawans have been asked to help in the valuation of HDIL encumbered properties.
The High Court announced this verdict after the petitioner had argued in the court that at the given speed the recovery to the bank may take ages and the poor customers may have to wait till eternity to get back their money.
A property which has not loan or rider attached to it, is known as unencumbered while the opposite is true for encumbered properties. The
Court may order sale of unencumbered properties if the current exercise is not able to recover the total dues to the PMC Bank.
Indian Cooperative reported earlier that ED has filed a charge-sheet in the money-laundering case of Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank. The charge-sheet runs into 7,000 pages and names HDIL promoter Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan, his son Sarang, PMC Bank’s former managing director Joy Thomas and ex-chairperson Waryam Singh.
RBI-appointed administrator had requested PMC Bank’s big depositors not to withdraw their money for three years. The bank’s administrator thinks, this will enable the bank to have a corpus of Rs 3,500 crore as a stable asset base for up to three years.
It was also reported that some leading depositors are willing not to withdraw their deposits. Earlier, a large number of depositors held a protest meeting before the RBI office demanding assurances from the authorities.
The scam came to light in September 2019 when it was discovered that the UCB has violated banking rules for many years to support HDIL even when the company has gone kaput. The issue also got political overtones in last Assembly elections as helpless victims ran from pillar to post to get back their money.