The Chennai Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) pulled up the erstwhile resolution professional, founders and also cloud service provider of Inasra Technologies Private Limited, which ran the brand Stayzilla, for not making the financial statements available to the official liquidator.
Last year, NCLT ordered the liquidation of Inasra and appointed S. Kannan as company liquidator. The liquidator moved a petition stating that the information required were not made available and he was not able to perform his function effectively. Karthigeyan Srinivasan (erstwhile resolution professional), Yogendra Vasupal and Sachit Singhi (promoters of Stayzilla) and Amazon Web Services were named as respondents in the case.
The liquidator sought for the insolvency professional to hand over the entirety of documents and other materials which was in possession of the company during the insolvency process.
He also asked the co-founders to provide statements for the fiscal year 2017-18 , the provident fund returns, proof of employment, challans paid and list of employees.
‘ISP not paid’
Mr. Srinivasan said the records were kept in cloud storage and due to non-payment of ₹65,000 fees to Amazon Web Services, the service provider, he was not able to retrieve the information.
In his argument, Mr. Vasupal said he and Mr. Singhi fully cooperated with Mr. Srinivasan and made him aware of the fact that the data would be erased if the payment was not made to the service provider. On the other hand, Amazon Web Services blamed the company’s promoters for non-payment of fees and said it exercised its rights of termination as per the agreement and it was not aware of the insolvency process.
NCLT noted that there seems to be dereliction of duty on the part of all the respondents by not providing the necessary information to the liquidator to perform his function effectively. It would be of no avail of the respondents to point an accusing finger at each other, all of which seriously undermines the interest of creditors and employees of Insara, it noted.
NCLT directed them either to individually or jointly to provide all the data and information sought by the liquidator, particularly in relation to the company’s financial statements, within three weeks from the date of its order.
The lapse on the part of Mr. Srinivasan should be noted by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) for suitable enquiry and action, it added.
