In 2018, the Goel brothers had just begun their war ‘officially’ over the company, Omaxe Limited, followed by Sunil Goel’s move to the National Company Law Tribunal alleging financial mismanagement by his elder brother and founder of the company, Rohtas Goel.
However, it was a melting point that threw light into the alleged scam, in which Rohtas Goel allegedly had unaccounted cash transactions to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore, according to the Income Tax Department.
The civil engineer-turned-first generation entrepreneur Rohtas started the company’s contracting business on a small scale in 1987. Within two years, his company was incorporated as Omaxe Builders Private Ltd, and in 1999, it became a ‘Limited Company’.
Headed by Goel, Omaxe slowly but steadily made its footprints in the real estate sector. By 2007, Omaxe came out with its initial public offering (IPO), which got oversubscribed by 70 times. Soon, the company spread its presence in 27 cities across eight states.
Since then the small town youth from Haryana’s Hassanpur had no looking back until his own brother turned against him.
In January last year, the Chandigarh bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) admitted the petition filed by Sunil Goel against Omaxe Ltd over alleged acts of oppression and mismanagement by the company and its management.
Sunil, who was the former Joint Managing Director of the company, levelled allegations against Rohtas for indulging in financial fraud, siphoning off funds, insider trading, and inflation of turnover of the company.
The petition said that in June 2017, Omaxe took a loan of Rs 250 crore from Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited, as per the minutes of the Executive Committee’s meeting. It said that though Sunil Goel was a part of the Executive Committee, he did not receive any notice of the meeting wherein the resolution for taking the loan of Rs 250 crore was approved.
“It is also stated that Sunil Goel has been repeatedly appointed as Joint Managing Director of Omaxe Limited till 27.09.2017 on which date he was illegally ousted in the 28th Annual General Meeting of the company where several resolutions, declaring dividend only to non-promoter shareholders and appointment of Seema Prasad as Director of Omaxe Limited, were passed,” it said.
The petition filed by Sunil Goel claimed the respondents, including Rohtas Goel, illegally restrained the petitioners from participating in the Annual General Meeting by using force and threats.
Further, as per the plea, Rohtas was also involved in the exclusion of the petitioners from the affairs of the company to “gain control over the company and all its subsidiaries in order to financially disable the petitioners”.
Rohtas allegedly conducted the affairs of the company in an oppressive manner towards the petitioners and also towards the interest of the company.
“It is stated that owing to such financial mismanagement and fraudulent transactions, the financial debts have increased and profits have dipped down. Various letters have been issued on behalf of the petitioners, objecting to the illegal and oppressive acts of the respondents, but in vain,” said the petition.
Primarily, the shareholding of the promoter and promoter group is through Guild Builders Private Limited, which holds around 68.45 per cent shares of Omaxe Limited and is a holding company of Omaxe Limited.
As per the CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) statement, the method of the company was to receive unaccounted cash from its customers on the spot which cannot be entered in any books of account evading the evidence of receipt of such amounts. This money exceeding Rs 3,000 crore has been gathered so far, as per the IT Department.
On March 22, the Income Tax Department’s search action against Omaxe led to the seizure of unaccounted cash of more than Rs 25 crore and jewellery worth Rs 5 crore. Moreover, 11 lockers have been placed under restraint, and are yet to be operated.
The searches were conducted at more than 45 locations in Delhi-NCR, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Lucknow and Indore.
