Hyderabad: A Chennai-born serial entrepreneur Chinnakannan Sivasankaran — a Seychelles national — is alleged to have used a divorce drama and his clout with the Indian Ocean archipelago to default on a settlement awarded by a British court to Bahrain Telecommu-nication, claims a report.
The dispute arose between Siva and Batelco in 2012 following the outbreak of the 2G scam in which the Supreme Court quashed the permits of erstwhile cellular venture S Tel — in which Batelco and Siva were stakeholders.
In 2009, Batelco had acquired a 42.7 per cent stake in S Tel, which had been awarded a 2G permit in 2008. As part of the deal, Batelco was entitled to exercise the put option (sale) in the event of a ‘liquidity event” and Siva was expected to honour the put option.
However, when Batelco exercised the put option after the Supreme Court cancelled S Tel’s 2G permits, Siva refused honour the commitment. Follow-ing this, Batelco sued him in a British court, which ordered Siva to pay $212 million.
The US-based portal Daily Beast claims that Siva managed to escape “without paying a cent.” According to the Daily Beast, “the 59-year-old used his Seychelles citizenship to arrange a swift legal split from his wife, to whom he then transferred at least $95 million in assets — 39 plots of land, an island and numerous corporate holdings registered in Seychelles and the British Virgin Islands, including those that owned even more real estate — as part of the divorce settlement.”
The portal claims that the “transfer, in fact, took place on May 14, 2014, a day before Siva testified in court on the Batelco case.” The portal claims that Siva, who was the original promoter of Aircel, was also a beneficiary of Seychelles’ new bankruptcy law. “A year after Siva lost his case in Britain, Seych-elles reformed its bankruptcy statute, thereby shortening the timespan of official bankruptcy from three years to one and also making it more difficult for creditors to collect from the new owners of transferred assets,” the portal claimed.
The portal said the change in law “occurred mere weeks before Siva became the first person in the history of Seychelles to file for bankruptcy. To date, he is also the only person to have done so, before or after the law changed. He hasn’t paid Batelco a cent and his actual financial relationship with his former wife remains a mystery.” The portal said Siva did not respond to its request for a comment.
