Court Allows Cbi Sleuths To Decode Accounts Data

The Delhi High Court yesterday allowed the official liquidator, appointed following the CRB Capital Markets Ltd collapse, to associate experts from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in decoding the computerised accounts of the 40 group companies under investigation in the Rs 1,200 crore scam. The CBI shall submit its preliminary report to the court on July 8. The vacation judge, Justice S N Kapoor, passed this order, modifying his earlier decision appointing two agents to look into the alleged transfer of funds to several sister companies to defraud the investors. The judge stated that the CBI director may depute one or more computer experts to elicit or retrieve as much information as possible.

 

In a related development, Canfin Homes Ltd and Daewoo Finance Ltd moved applications for protection of their interests.

Canfin had given loans to CRB Caps and it wanted that the official receiver appointed by the Mumbai High Court should not dispose of the property attached by him. Following the application, Justice Kapoor barred the receiver from parting with the possession of the concerned property till next week.

Counsel for Daewoo Finance, Shashi Prabhu, submitted that his client should not be clubbed with the tainted companies as CRB has only 24 per cent holding in it.

According to him, 76 per cent stake in the joint venture is held by Daewoo and it has six out of eight directors. He said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had also supported its view in a letter and pleaded for defreezing of its account.

On his part, the liquidator took exception to the RBIs stand in the Daewoo case. According to him, the shares were sold to Daewoo Finance at face value, ignoring the market price. He urged the court to produce the market price at the time of the share transfer. The court allowed the request and further asked Daewoo to produce copies of the bank drafts.

The court further asked the company to provide details of the reduction of shareholdings by CRB Caps from 50 to 24 per cent last September and also sought to know as to how much money was paid to CRB Caps in the process. The full details shall be produced at the next hearing.

The high court last month had appointed an official liquidator to provisionally take charge of the CRB assets and account books of the company on a wind-up petition filed by the RBI.

On Friday, the high court had frozen the accounts of 40 sister companies of the group and had barred all financial institutions, including nationalised, cooperative, scheduled and foreign banks, from dealing with the funds of these companies. This order automatically stands extended.