Yash Birla is a Wilful Defaulter, says UCO Bank in a Public Notice

Moneylife Digital Team 17 June 2019

Economy & Nation

UCO Bank has declared industrialist and Page3 regular Yashovardhan (Yash) Birla as a wilful defaulter after Birla Surya Ltd failed to repay loans of Rs67.65 crore. Mr Birla is chairman of the Yash Birla Group. This is a rare incident where a lender has published a photo of a well-known personality as a wilful defaulter.

Interestingly, UCO Bank was founded in 1943 under the aegis of industrialist GD Birla, the brother of Yash Birla's great grandfather Rameshwar Das Birla.

Moneylife has been warning about the financial troubles of Yash Birla group since past several years. During 2013, Moneylife Foundation have had received complaints from members that they are not receiving their fixed deposit maturity amounts from two Yash Birla Group companies namely Zenith Birla (India) and Birla Power Solutions.

"The Yash Birla Group of companies has been struggling, if the share price is anything to go by. As you will see from the table below, none of the Yash Birla Group companies are quoting at double digits. Out of the eight companies, all but one gave negative returns since 1 March 2013. Is there trouble for the group that the shareholders do not know about?" Moneylife had written in June 2013.

In a public notice which also carried a photo of Yash Birla, UCO Bank said the account was declared a non-performing asset (NPA) on 3 June 2019.

"Birla Surya was sanctioned with credit limit of Rs100 crore only with fund-based facilities for the purpose of manufacturing multi crystalline solar photovoltaic cells from our flagship corporate branch in Mumbai. The present balance outstanding is Rs67.65 crore plus unapplied interest from the date on NPA," the notice said.

The bank further said that the borrower did not repay the dues despite several notices served by the Kolkata-based lender.

Earlier in January 2019, the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has asked the serious fraud investigation office (SFIO) to investigate three companies promoted by Yash Birla — Birla Cotsyn India Ltd, Birla Shloka Edutech Ltd and Zenith Birla (India) Ltd. The MCA order was based on a recommendations of the registrar of companies (RoC), whose investigation report had alleged diversion of funds by these three companies.

At that time, Anant Vardhan, president, corporate affairs and communications at the Yash Birla group had told the Indian Express that while Birla Cotsyn and Birla Shloka have repaid all small investors, Zenith Birla is in the process of paying the investors.

In 2016, Mr Birla and other top officials of Birla Power Solutions were chargesheeted in a cheating case. In this case, the economic offences wing (EOW) even had sealed his properties after receiving permission from the state government.

In June 2013, Yash Birla was portrayed in page3 media as mourning over the loss of his private retreat near Kedarnath, while thousands of small investors including senior citizens, were doing the same for investing in his group companies in either stocks or fixed deposits (FDs). (Read: Yash Birla mourning over a property, investors over their FDs in his companies)

A simple search on Google shows Mr Birla, a corporate honcho, is happier in the company of Bollywood stars than India Inc. He is more known for his lifestyle than business decisions or corporate moves. This is in contrast with other members from the Birla clan like Kumar Mangalam Birla, who is more in the news for his business moves and not for attending parties.

Comments

User

Prakash Bhate

7 years ago

Hafeez Saeed, Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim must be regretting their decision for doing what they are doing. They are being chased relentlessly by the Indian Government. All they had to do was to be financial terrorists in India and they would have been on Page 3, would be leading a luxurious life with their trips to fancy resorts and moving around in Audis. Plus they would be doing more harm to India than what they are doing currently. Such a no-brainer.

Parimal Shah

7 years ago

How lazy can bank officers be? Why not take it to NCLT under IBC? How many more years the bank would have waited, I wonder.
Consider this, if one borrows few lakhs from bank for buying a house, the moment s/he misses one instalment, notice follows, and proceedings are started after some time.
Moral of the story
Borrow big and don't bother to pay or respond.
Let it become bank's problem.
MERA BHARAT MAHAN!!!
RBI - Wake up and do your job diligently. Put stringent risk management system for ALL PSU and corporate banks and IMPLIMENT rules strictly. Time for kid gloving is over.

lalit

7 years ago

Birla shloka edutech has not paid fixed deposit yet