The Delhi High Court has recently held that the applicants are not entitled for grant of bail even on merits and dismissed the bail pleas of accused in the fraud allegedly resulting in misappropriation of the public money to the tune of Rs. 5,435/- Crores, in the Bhushan Power and Steel Limited case. The investigation is pending under the Serious Fraud Investigation Office(SFIO) under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs(MCA).
It was observed that, “All the financial statements of the BPSL and various accused companies were prepared by him(appellant), which were not reflecting the true and fair view of the affairs of the company. He had signed the balance sheets of BPSL for the financial year 2010-11 & 2017-18. He was allegedly aware that BPSL used to make the payments in the form of capital advances to various companies based at Kolkata which further invested in the accused companies by rotation of these funds.”
The further allegations are that the issues were reflagged in the forensic report conducted by E&Y for the period Financial Year 2013-2014 to 2015-2016. According to the allegations, the applicant-Amarjeet Sharma was well aware that the advances to suppliers were in fact not genuine business. Instances of larger fraud committed by various individuals including the applicants have been highlighted while showing that there were instances of syphoning off materials from BPSL Plant, Sambalpur, Orissa. The diversion of funds from BPSL in the form of bogus capital advances and routing the same as equity or unsecured loans in related entities of BPSL have also been pointed out in the allegations.
Amarjeet Sharma, having previously been the Head of Accounts Department and Alkesh Sharma having been the Ex-President of Accounts, both influential positions, the nature and gravity of offence alleged to have been committed and the incomplete status of investigation was taken into consideration and the accused were denied bail in lack of reasons to believe that the accused had not committed said offences.
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