Methods or types of frauds by promoters or companies:
During the course of investigation by SFIO over the years, different types of frauds/fraudulent activities have been unearthed. Some of the types of frauds are illustrated below:
(a) Project Financing:
In one of the cases investigated by SFIO, it was noticed that an Indian company imported second hand plant and machinery from its parent company at a very high price. This over valued plant and machinery was used to obtain higher term loans from funding institutions. The loan amount thus obtained was transferred to parent company as payment liability against such plant and machinery. It was also noticed that the Indian company had received different invoices for majority of its machinery for submission to different Government agencies.
(b) Frauds during operations:
In one of the cases investigated by SFIO, it was noticed that an Indian company raised bills showing trading of diamonds among its various group companies in circular manner viz company A selling to B, then B selling to C and again C selling back to A. Thus, in this process, no goods were transferred and only sale and purchase bills were raised. These bills were discounted with banks and the company received huge amount of rupees as advance from banks against such bills. Initially the company complied in repayment of amount specified in the discounted bills after prescribed period. However, after sometimes, payment was stopped and main promoter of the company who was controlling all the affairs of the company fled the country and the company stopped functioning resulting into huge amount of bank funds becoming NPA.
In some cases investigated by SFIO, huge payments were shown to have been made to petty suppliers of steel items or to group companies during the period of construction of project by recording of supply of materials made by these entities. All these supplies were reflected in the books of account as work-in-progress, which was not verifiable, and during the course of investigation, these petty suppliers were found either nonexistent or not traceable. Group companies were also found to be either woundup or non-operational with no director of those companies being traceable. Funds transferred to these entities showing supply of material were found to have been taken out in cash by rotating through certain accounts or showing payments for certain non-verifiable expenses.
(c) Falsification of Financial Statements:
In some cases investigated by SFIO, it was found that, by following two accounting years, company was showing losses or very nominal profit in the Profit & Loss account filed to the Income tax department. However, huge profit was being shown in the Profit & Loss accounts filed with stock exchanges, ROC etc. The different amount of profits in the two sets of Profit & Loss Account for the same year was shown by resorting to valuation of stock at inflated value in the Profit & Loss Account that was filed with ROC, Stock exchanges following the accounting year other than financial year. In few cases, sales having heavy profit margin were recorded in those months, which were included in the accounting year followed for preparing the Profit & Loss Account filed with ROC and used for the purposes of investors or other stakeholders.
Source: MCA
