HYDERABAD: In a significant development, a company’s counsel told the High Court on Friday that a big group of firms was interested in taking over Agri Gold company and making payments after verifying the titles of the properties concerned.
Senior counsel P Sri Raghuram made this offer before a division bench of justices V Ramasubramanian and S V Bhatt which was dealing with a batch of petitions filed by Telangana Agri Gold Customers and Agents Welfare Association and others seeking a CBI probe into Agri Gold scam and the return of the depositors’ monies.
On an earlier occasion, the bench had directed the state government to auction identified properties through e-portal. Initially, the bench finalised 12 properties of Agri Gold and five properties of Akshaya Gold for auction on Andhra Pradesh government’s portal.
When the matter came up for hearing on Friday, the senior counsel made a mention before the bench saying that a big group was interested in buying Agri Gold’s assets.
While refusing to disclose the company’s name at this juncture, he submitted that the company had hired Deloitte to do a due diligence exercise and sought time before finalising the auction bids as it would affect their purchase deal in future.
The bench expressed its disinclination to stop the ongoing process to accommodate the said new attempt by an unknown company.
It, however, asked the senior counsel to file an affidavit in this regard. Already a lot of time was taken up in attempts to give the depositors their monies back. What would happen if, in the ‘due diligence’ concluded that the assets were not worth buying, the bench asked the senior counsel?
As for auction of properties, the bench came down heavily on the Agri Gold management for its failure to fulfil 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 pc higher rate offer brought by the company while we were told that the rate would be around five or six times what the successful bid fetched,” the bench remarked.
On the earlier occasion, the counsel for Agri Gold objected to the low rates fetched in the auction of properties, particularly the ones in Nuzvid in Krishna district and suggested that the actual rates were at least six times higher. The bench then permitted the company to bring a buyer for those properties.
On Friday, company’s counsel Janakiram Reddy presented before the court a buyer who said he was willing to buy the properties at 25 pc higher rate than what was auctioned for.
Expressing its displeasure at this offer, the High Court bench said, “It is too low to inspire the confidence of this court. This offer only proves that the auction was proper and the company’s claims of higher prices were wrong. 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. We will have to pull up our socks and deal strongly by not allowing such things in future”, the bench observed and posted the case to August 16.