The proposed transactions for a loan of around $1,050 million sourced from abroad for raising Rs.10,000 crore for the bail of Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy has failed, amicus curiae Shekhar Naphade informed the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Mr. Naphade orally briefed a bench led by Justice T. S. Thakur that the outcome came after an exchange of allegations between Sahara and Mirach Capital Llc of the U.S. The latter was supposed to provide a junior loan of $650 million and another $400 million to Sahara. The bench, however, said it cannot hear the matter off-hand and a proper application has to be taken before it takes cognisance of the alleged development. The court sought Sahara to file an affidavit explaining what went wrong.
In the previous hearing, the apex court had allowed Sahara to raise the junior loan of $650 million dollars from the foreign lender to pay Rs.5,000 crore and bank guarantee of the same amount for the release of Subrata Roy and two directors on bail.
The court had observed that the amount, raised as loan against its three overseas hotels located in London and New York, would be parked in Aamby Valley (Mauritius) Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sahara group's India-based Aamby Valley Limited.
The amount would then wholly go to market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Further, the court had asked Sahara to first check with the Reserve Bank of India if there were any impediments under the Foreign Exchange Management Act in case of transfer of the loan amount from its Mauritius subsidiary to the holding company Aamby Valley Limited. The same hearing saw the bench permit Mr. Roy and the group's two directors — Ravi Shankar Dubey and Ashok Roy Choudhary — to shift to a conference hall at the Tihar Jail complex.
This facility would last till February 20. It was meant to help them transact with prospective buyers of the group's three offshore hotels — Grosvenor House Hotel in London and the New York Plaza and Dream New York hotels in New York. Mr. Roy, Mr. Dubey and Mr. Choudhary were sent to custody on March 4, 2014, for not complying with the court's order of August 31, 2012, to return investors’ money.
