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High Court raps on Agrigold knuckles
The High Court at Hyderabad has come down heavily on Agrigold management for its failure to deliver on its promise of bringing a buyer who would offer much higher price than what was bid in the open auction. “We are completely unhappy with the 25 per cent higher rate offer brought by the company while we were told the rate would be around five to six times to what the successful bid fetched” rema
Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad has come down heavily on Agrigold management for its failure to deliver on its promise of bringing a buyer who would offer much higher price than what was bid in the open auction. “We are completely unhappy with the 25 per cent higher rate offer brought by the company while we were told the rate would be around five to six times to what the successful bid fetched” remarked the division bench comprising of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice S V Bhatt on Friday.
The Bench was hearing a PIL filed by Telangana Agrigold Customers and Agents Welfare Association seeking a CBI probe into the Agrigold scam and return of deposits of millions of depositors. During the previous hearing, the counsel for Agrigold company objected to the low rates fetched in the auction of properties, particularly the ones in Nuzvid, Krishna district and suggested that the actual rates are at least 5 to 6 times.
The Bench had permitted the company to bring a buyer for those properties. The counsel for the company Janakiram Reddy presented a buyer before the court on Friday who he said is willing to buy the properties at 25 per cent higher rate than what was fetched in the auction.
The Bench expressed its displeasure at this offer and commented that “it is too low to inspire the confidence of this Court”. The bench said that this offer brought by the company only proves that the auction was proper and the company’s claims of higher prices were wrong.
It said that if this is the manner in which the auction is sought to be obstructed, then the auction of 274 attached properties can never be completed. It expressed the resolve to not to allow such a thing by saying “We will have to pull up our socks and deal strongly in the future by not allowing such things”.
The case was posted to 7th August. Meanwhile, senior counsel P. Sri Raghuram made a mention before the bench saying that a big group was interested in buying the Agrigold assets and it had already employed Deloitte firm to do a due diligence exercise in this regard.
He requested to grant some time before finalising the auction bids as it would affect their purchase in future.
The bench asked the counsel to make an application in this regard. It also posed a question to the counsel asking what would happen if in the due diligence it was concluded that the assets are not worth buying and observed that already a lot of time is taken up in attempts to give back depositors monies. It expressed its disinclination to stop the process to accommodate this new attempt by an unknown company.
