Maytas moves HC against MMTC subsidiary

NEW DELHI: Maytas Properties, owned by the kin of disgraced founder chairman of IT firm Satyam B Ramalinga Raju, has moved Delhi High Court against IWKPD, a SPV owned jointly by MMTC and IL&FS, for their failure to honour investment commitment.

In its petition, which came up for hearing in the court today, Maytas has requested the high court to direct the Integrated Warehousing Kandala Project Development Ltd (IWKPD) and Axis Bank to abide by the agreed terms of contract and honour bank guarantee.

Admitting the petition, a single-member bench of Justice Anil Kumar directed IWKPD and Axis bank to file their reply and posted the matter to February 9.

IWKPD, which had earlier entered into a contract with Maytas Construction, a wholly owned subsidiary of Maytas Properties, to pick up its 74 per cent equity in the project, on January 22 asked Axis Bank to stop encashment of bank guarantee and post-paid cheques within a fortnight of admission of fraud by Raju.

IWKPD had been constituted with a purpose to develop a Free Trade Warehousing Zone at Kandala, Gujarat.

In its petition filed through Advocate Maninder Singh, Maytas submitted, "The purchase of share by plaintiff (Maytas) was to be from the shareholding of MMTC and IL&FS in the defendant company (IWKPD)."

As per the agreement entered into by them on August 25, 2008, Maytas was to pay Rs 20 crore and out of that, 15 per cent amount (Rs 3 crore) was to be paid immediately and the rest in five years for 74 per cent equity in IWKPD.

"As per the financial proposal, Maytas submitted a bank guarantee for an amount of Rs 2 crore, 10 per cent of the total bid, and also a post-dated cheque of Rs 3 crore drawn on Axis bank," submitted Maytas.