Amrapali's CFO apologises to SC for 'memory loss' claim, answers all questions

NEW DELHI: Two days after claiming to be suffering from "memory loss" and blaming it for his "inability" to field queries of the Supreme Court-appointed forensic auditors regarding Amrapali Group's financial transactions, the company's chief financial officer offered profuse apologies on Friday and answered all questions posed by the court. Irked by Chander Wadhwa's claim, the SC had asked for his personal appearance for a "memory test".

Wadhwa answered all questions from the bench of Justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit about his stint in the company after which the court asked him to give all necessary information to the SC-appointed auditors — Ravi Bhatia and Pawan Kumar Aggarwal — regarding the group.

The judges asked him about his qualification, salary, date of joining and his functions in Amrapali Group. Wadhwa answered all questions promptly and apologised for avoiding queries of the auditors under the guise of memory loss.

"Now you have recollected your memory and your memory is restored, you must cooperate with the forensic auditors and provide them all information. If you give wrong information, you will be in deep trouble. Do not try to act smart or we will send you where your directors are (police custody)," the bench said while asking him to give an affidavit with details of the amount he received from Amrapali Group as salary and perks.

The bench also hauled up the statutory auditors of the group for not providing all the documents to the court-appointed auditors and said it amounted to professional misconduct as they were trying to protect the dubious transactions of the company and did not bring it to the notice of the government authorities concerned.

"It appears that you are part of Amrapali Group and you are party to all this fraud," the bench said. The auditors admitted to their fault and assured the court of full cooperation in the ongoing probe. They also admitted that some companies were set up by Amrapali Group to transfer homebuyers' money after the SC-appointed auditors informed the court that the group created many "dummy" companies to siphon off money.

The court directed the company auditors to hand over all documents under their possession within three days. It also ordered Amrapali Group to provide a list of the "dummy" companies along with their bank account details and transactions.

Senior advocate Geeta Luthra, appearing for the group, pleaded the court to relax its order putting Amrapali CMD Anil Sharma and two other directors —- Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar — under police custody without arresting them. She pleaded that the directors be allowed to visit their homes for a few hours to spend time with family members. The court, however, refused to relax its order and said they will remain in custody till all documents are handed over to the forensic auditors.

The forensic auditors said in their report how homebuyers' money was diverted by the group for purposes other than constructing the housing projects and even directors were given crores of rupees under the garb of "professional charges".