As the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) saga deepens, the forensic auditor Grant Thornton appointed by Forward Markets Commission (FMC) met the FMC officials in Mumbai and gave its first update on Tuesday, said sources privy to the development.
A source present at the meeting on Tuesday, said, “NSEL is not providing proper books to the auditor and there is no proper risk management service with them.”
Grant Thornton will submit its final report by September 14 and FMC will appoint a co-ordination team between the forensic auditor and NSEL.
As the auditors addressed the FMC officials, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials are investigating if there was a violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) with funds raised through NSEL routed to punt on commodity exchanges in Dubai, Bahrain, Mauritius and Singapore. In April 2006, FMC had come up with a circular which restricted trading terminals of foreign commodity exchanges deeming it as illegal.
Financial Technologies is the promoter group of NSEL which is in the middle of payment crisis; NSEL owes Rs 5,500 crore to its 13,000 investors. Intervening in this fiasco, the government had appointed a high powered committee under chairmanship of Arvind Mayaram, secretary, economic affairs, the ministry of finance, whose other members include company affairs secretary, consumer affairs secretary and revenue secretary.
NSEL had suspended trading and merged the settlement cycles of all one-day forward contracts other than e-series contracts on July 31, 2013. The board of NSEL had sacked its MD and CEO Anjani Sinha and six top officials, including CFO Shashidhar Kotian, on August 20.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
