The Quint has unearthed the paper trail of an unsecured loan to a firm owned by Seema Goyal, the wife of Union Minister Piyush Goyal, from a loss-making private firm.
News website The Wire, on 3 April, reported on the Rs 650-crore loan default by Mumbai-based Shirdi Industries, which listed Piyush Goyal as its chairman until July 2010. The Wire report states that the last statutory filing done by Intercon – a company owned by Seema Goyal – for FY 2016 shows an outstanding amount of Rs 1.59 crore to Asis Industries, a company owned by Shirdi promoters. Even as Asis extended a loan to Seema Goyal’s firm, Shirdi also had a Rs 4 crore provident fund default.
However, The Wire report makes no mention of some relevant facts and documents. According to the Registrar of Companies (ROC) documents, as accessed by The Quint, the balance sheet filed by the company owned by Goyal’s wife shows that in the FY 2013-2014, Asis Industries Ltd gave an unsecured loan of Rs 1,37,55,589 crore (over Rs 1.37 crore) at a simple interest rate of 12% per annum, while having reported a loss of Rs 1 crore approximately in the same fiscal year.
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In the FY 2014-15, Intercon Advisors Pvt Ltd revealed in its balance sheet an outstanding sum of over Rs 1,48,35,589 crore (over Rs 1.48 crores) towards Asis Industries Ltd, which includes an interest of Rs 10,80,000 (Rs 10.8 lakh), covering 7.85% of the actual unsecured loan of over Rs 1.37 crore.
The Asis Industries gave the loan to Intercon Advisors at an interest rate of 12% per annum, then why did the latter choose to display 7.85% as the interest in its records? The question looms large. The balance sheet doesn’t reveal any payment made by Intercon to Asis between FY 2013-14 and 2014-15.
The story doesn’t end there. When we checked Intercon’s balance sheet for the FY 2015-16, we found that the company added interest of Rs 10,80,000 (7.27%) to the outstanding sum of Rs 1,48,35,589 towards Asis Industries, once again less than 12% interest per annum.
In the FY 2016-17 balance sheet, Intercon chose not to mention the names of the corporates or companies from which it received unsecured loans. It simply says that Intercon received an unsecured loan of Rs 3,17,32, 499 from companies.
Why did Intercon choose not to reveal the names of the companies from which it received an unsecured loan, in the balance sheet of FY 2016-17?
We have already written to the Union Minister seeking an answer to the questions raised in this article. This story will be updated if and when we get a reply.
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