Forensic auditors find web of 200-250 firms where Amrapali diverted funds

The Supreme Court Wednesday directed the Amrapali Group to disclose the names of all the companies with which it had any kind of transactions after forensic auditors pointed out that there may be a web of more than 200-250 such firms where home buyers money was transferred. The two forensic auditors, appointed by the court to look into the affairs of Amrapali Group said besides 47 sister companies, they stumbled upon 31 companies whose names were never disclosed by the embattled real estate firm. The court was also told that there may be a case of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), as large amount of money was transferred to a multinational company based in Mauritius. It questioned Amarapali Group CFO Chander Wadhwa as to how a group company paid his Income Tax amounting to Rs 2 crore, when he was earning only Rs 50,000 per month. A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit said money of innocent buyers could not be misused like this and asked the Mauritius-based JP Morgan company to file its account statement with regard to the transaction with the Amrapali Group. The counsel for J P Morgan said they had invested more than Rs 100 crore in the real estate business of Amrapali Group and they had a claim of Rs 168 crore from the reality firm. At the outset, forensic auditors Pawan Kumar Agarwal and Ravi Bhatia said besides the 47 sister companies declared by the Amrapali Group, they have initially found 23 companies and now another eight companies with which the reality firm had transactions. “We have no iota of doubt that not only promoters, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the internal auditors of the Amrapali Group were part of the syndicate. Prima facie, we have found the relatives of promoters, CFO and internal auditors were directors in these companies, where the money was transferred,” Agarwal said. “Initially, we found 23 companies where transaction had taken place and now we have found eight more companies. We anticipate that there are more than 200-250 such companies, where the money was transferred, but their names have not been disclosed by the Amrapali Group till now,” he said.