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Company Charged With E-Way Fraud

  • The highways authority has issued an order terminating the deal with the company that operates the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway for serious financial fraud and failure to improve services at the 32-lane toll plaza.The termination order that runs to a dozen pages largely blames the developer on three grounds. First, the developer allegedly changed lenders twice. In the latest instance, it didn't get NHAI's permission for raising a loan of Rs 1,597 crore. The company used a conditional no objection certificate issued by the NHAI way back in 2009 for later refinancing a debt of Rs 1,275 crore. According to NHAI, the loan document was submitted to it on October 9, 2010, but the disbursement had already started. The authority has alleged that the concessionaire repaid the old loan of Rs 1,275 crore using a common (escrow) account and even diverted Rs 640 crore to the parent company.
  • The second charge is that the concessionaire has failed to expand the 32-lane toll plaza, the major traffic bottleneck on the expressway. Third, it says DGSCL did not finalize its annual plan to operate and maintain of the 27.7km stretch.Alleging that the concessionaire was still not acting in "good faith" to improve services on the expressway, NHAI said all this left "no scope for taking any action rather than termination of the concession agreement".
  • Reacting to the order, DSGCL said, "We are aware that NHAI had to issue a termination notice as per the directives of the high court for the purposes of bringing the reasons for termination on the court record. We have received this notice. As per the court order, the NHAI has been restrained by the high court from taking any further action on this decision till the next hearing on March 1. However, we continue to work closely with the authorities to resolve outstanding issues."

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