A report by The Wire claimed that a Mumbai-based company that defaulted on a Rs 650 crore loan had Union Minister and now Railway Minister Piyush Goyal as their director till 2010 and had also advanced an unsecured loan to a firm run by the minister’s wife Seema Goyal.
The promoters of Shirdi Industries gave an amount of Rs 1.59 crore as a loan to its parent company Asis Industries. This company, in turn, gave the money to Intercon Advisers Private Limited, which is headed by Seema Goyal.
“Piyush is a very close friend of mine since 1994,” Rakesh Agarwal, the promoter of Shirdi Industries and Asis India, told The Wire. “My relationship with Piyush is of a very loving nature and a very respectful nature but I have never used that relationship or taken benefits from it. We do not come from that sort of culture.”
Default amount when money was forwarded
Rakesh Agarwal denies that forwarding money to Intercon was a bad thing while his own company was defaulting on loans taken from banks. “This amount [unsecured loan] was given a few years ago,” he told The Wire. “At that time we had money and I was requested if I can spare money and given our friendship I did.”
At the time when the money was forwarded, Shirdi had a Rs 4 crore provident fund default. After the company was referred to the National Company Law Tribunal, the banks decided to write off 60% of the debts. Then on December 2017, the tribunal allowed the company promoters to bid as 99% of the lenders backed out.
The tribunal’s decision was contradictory to the Narendra Modi government’s November 2017 ordinance that barred company promoters to bid on their own companies if the banks have declared the loans as non-performing assets for more than a year.
The Wire also claimed that the company started delaying on payments when Piyush Goyal was on the board from 2008 to 2010. “Unlike other defaulters, we are still here and fighting from the front,” Agarwal said. “We have not closed operations in any of the firms.”
Read More at The Wire.
