SC orders auction of Sahara's Aamby Valley after Subrata Roy fails to pay up
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the auction of Sahara’s Aamby Valley, after the conglomerate’s chief Subrata Roy failed to deposit money for refunding investors.
The apex court has appointed the Bombay High Court’s official liquidator for auctioning the property.
The court has also ordered personal presence of Subrata Roy before it on April 28.
The Supreme Court had warned Sahara last week it would be compelled to auction the group’s properties if it failed to deposit Rs 5,092 core in the SEBI-Sahara refund account by April 17.
The Supreme Court had attached Aamby Valley properties worth Rs 39,000 crores in early February in the Sahara refund case.
It had also asked the Sahara group to furnish a list of properties that were free from litigation and mortgage so that they could be put into public auction.
Sahara had admitted before the top court that it still had to pay Rs 14,000 crore as principal money to SEBI and that it had already paid Rs 11,000 crore.
Sahara chief Subrato Roy's parole was earlier extended till November 28 after the company deposited Rs 200 crores with SEBI last October, as a condition for his release. The apex court had then granted four weeks' custody parole to Roy to perform his mother's last rites.
Roy was in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 till his mother's death on May 6, 2016, for not complying with the apex court's orders in connection with the long dispute with SEBI.
SEBI had said Roy failed to comply with the top court’s order in 2012 directing him to return investors more than Rs 20,000 crore with 15 percent interest that his two companies Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd and the Sahara Housing Finance Corp Ltd had raised, through optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCD) in 2007 and 2008.
