SC grills Amrapali Group CFO

The Supreme Court on Friday grilled Chander Wadhwa, the chief financial officer (CFO), and internal auditors of Amrapali Group over diversion of home buyers' money. It ordered for the company's CMD and its two other directors to remain under police surveillance at a hotel in Noida.

The top court zeroed in on 23 "dummy companies", which the firm claimed to have created as special purpose vehicles (SPVs), and sought their details of incorporation and bank statements.

It asked the group to handover all the laptops, computers and hard-drives used by the company since 2008 to the forensic auditors appointed by the court to audit the affairs.

A bench of judges Arun Mishra and U U Lalit, grilled Wadhwa, who earlier claimed to have had "memory failure" during questioning by the forensic auditors. Prompting to his answers, the judges said "Now you don't seem to have any memory fail. Your memory seems to be intact now". Wadhwa replied, "I apologise for my conduct before the forensic auditors."

It also asked the company's two internal auditors, Anil Mittal and Ravi Kapoor, to handover all the documents, warning them of jail term for non-compliance.

The court, directed the banks which have accounts of Amrapali Group to release the statements of the 20082018 period, to be handed over to the forensic auditors in three days by the company.

"We request the police to collect the documents from Dhavan and Company, and Anil Mittal and Company (internal auditors). In case the documents are not handed over to the police, this will be viewed very seriously and punishment will be imposed," the bench said in its order.