Friday, September 30, 2005

Raj(Bunty) aur Seema(Bably)


raj basantani.he started his career as a nondescrepit clerk in state bank of india.and now he is absconding. interpol has been alerted. as usual the govt shut the stable doors after the horses bolted. they woke up too late. raj had by then cheated some 20 nationalised banks of rs 155 crores.

his vehicle was his diamond exporting flagship,soundcratft industries ltd. annual sales of rs 650 crores and gross profit of rs 45 crores. he and his wife seema made suckers of seasoned bankers and investors. they used the same set of documents to raise mutilple loans. in addition to his exporting company, rajkumar chainrai basantani had his own brokerage house and utilised the money raised through his socalled exports to play the stock market through some hand picked clients. a merry go round. he rigged the price of soundcraft's shares which gave him higher collateral on which he raised more money. that is called circular trading.

his collaterals were a 2100 sq meter property in new mumbai,a rs 30 lakh fd and 2,00,000 equity shares in soundcraft industries.he piled up a rs 23.75 crores credit line in andhra bank soon using export bill discounting facility.and a foreign currency loan of rs 8.75 crores.and he converted that later into a bill discounting facility.when the several bills drawn on foreign firms actually fell due for payment they were dishonoured. andhra bank lost about rs 28 crores. the same flat was pledged to many banks.and his shares which were provided as collateral had become duds from an all time high of rs 41 in 2000,it crashed to 22 paise in sep 2004.


all the 17 banks have moved the debt recovery tribunal .the banks have realised some of the monies though, as the loans were guaranteed by export credit guarantee corpn. canara bank and sidbi lost rs 20 crores each.dena bank lost rs 17 crores and uco rs 15 crores. and then other banks in all lost about rs 67 crores. that makes it a whopping rs 155 crores.

raj and seema became crorepatis in a short timespan and in 'ishstyle' a la bunty aur bably. will the law catchup with the infamous r and s. time alone will answer that question. in the meanwhile the banks and poor investors have been taken up the garden path!

a right royal ride .

4 comments:

rums said...

uncle i didn't know you were such a great visualizer! you can beat the desk editors hollow with your talents! :)

gs said...

thanks for your generous comments,rums.that is a great motivator for my blogging.and, incidentally, the next one you will love.and tiil then let there be some suspense.

rums said...

uncle you should enable the spam guard on your comments.

lulu said...

totally agree with rums. the spam on your site is too much and a bit distracting!!!