IEPF Authority recovers Rs 1,514 crore of depositors' money from Peerless

The Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) Authority has been able to obtain transfer deposits worth Rs 1,514 crore from Kolkata-based Peerless General Finance and Investment Company.

This money of depositors was pending with the company for the last 15 years. It was taken by issuing 1.49 crore deposit certificates to over one crore individual investors, according to an official statement released on Tuesday.

Data submitted by Peerless shows that 50.77 per cent of the total amount was taken in the form of deposit certificates each with a value of Rs 2,000 or less.

A majority of these investors are common citizens belonging to lower and middle-income group, including daily wage earners, from 30 states and union territories. Most of them are from West Bengal.

The IEPF Authority, set up under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, is in the process of commissioning an online facility to collect primary information directly from retail investors about the deposits, which have matured and are still pending with various entities for repayment or payment of interests.

The authority has also acted against companies which have transferred the unpaid dividend amount to IEPF but failed to transfer shares in accordance with Section 124 (6) of the Companies Act.

In some other cases, the companies are showing unclaimed and unpaid amounts in their balance sheets but have not transferred such amounts to IEPF even after seven years. The authority has issued more than 4,000 notices to these companies under section 206(4) of the Act for calling information. The size of IEPF Fund has almost doubled within one year with an accumulated corpus of Rs 4,138 crore.