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Bengaluru/Gurugram: In April 2017, one of the authors of this article met the then President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, in Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. The purpose of the meeting was to ask him a question for a book that was published by Penguin Random House later that year titled, Thin Dividing Line: India, Mauritius and Global Illicit Financial Flows, authored by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta with Shinzani Jain. At the meeting over tea and snacks in ornate cutlery, the discussion moved to a...

India’s mediascape has changed dramatically in less than a decade. The pace of these changes has accelerated since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic recession. Across the world and in this country as well, daily newspapers and periodicals on paper are closing down faster than ever before; advertising flows from private corporate entities have reduced drastically; journalists are being thrown out of their jobs or being asked to accept deep salary cuts, and...

Gurugram: The assets of two bankrupt companies in the Mumbai-headquartered, Nagpur-based Uttam group of companies, promoted by members of the Miglani family, are being sought to be purchased by firms owned by non-resident Indians under the statutory Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The processes are, however, being questioned, past complaints to tribunals as well as a recent affidavit filed on September 26 in the Supreme Court, reveal. The two companies are Uttam Value Steels Limited (UVSL)...

Gurugram: The decade of the 1980s saw one of the most talked-about clashes in corporate India between late Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of the Reliance group of companies, and Nusli Wadia, the head of Bombay Dyeing, a rival manufacturer of synthetic textiles. In his biography of Ambani, titled The Polyester Prince, published in January 1997, Hamish McDonald detailed the high-profile battle. His book was not available in India due to legal disputes till many years later, in a different version...

There are conspiracy theories galore as to why WhatsApp, the messaging application of the global social media monopoly, Facebook Inc., has been unable to offer a mobile internet-based payments service to its 400 million-plus users in India. Is it on account of lawsuits pending before the Supreme Court? Are two organisations, the country’s central bank and apex monetary authority, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella body vetting...

Bengaluru/Gurugram: On August 31, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Kumar Mishra, that included Justices Vineet Saran and M R Shah, ruled in favour of a company in the Adani group in a dispute with public sector power distribution companies in Rajasthan. The verdict, issued three days before Justice Mishra retired from the court on September 2, has granted Adani Power Rajasthan Limited (APRL) – which owns a 1,320 megawatt capacity thermal power station in Kawai, Baran district –...

On September 1, a Supreme Court bench led by Justice Arun Mishra and comprising Justices S Abdul Nazeer and M R Shah ruled on the so-called AGR (or Adjusted Gross Revenues) issue relating to back-payments for use of spectrum that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is claiming from private companies. The verdict, one of Justice Mishra’s final rulings prior to his retirement on September 2, was on petitions filed by the DoT and by telecom companies to permit a staggered payment schedule...

After a series of bitter legal disputes involving entities located in different parts of the world, such as South Africa, Mauritius, Abu Dhabi and Canada and after search-and-seizure raids were conducted on the corporate group that operates India’s second-largest airport in Mumbai, on the last day of August, the Hyderabad-based GVK group, headed by G V K Reddy, capitulated and decided to “cooperate” with the Adani group to enable the latter to acquire controlling interest in companies operating...

Gurugram: On August 18, NewsClick published an article pointing out how a clutch of former employees of JSW Steel Limited (JSW), headed by Sajjan Jindal, had been hired at senior levels in various offices of the sick and debt-ridden Bhushan Power and Steel Limited (BPSL). These employees had been hired despite the fact that JSW has not released the bid value of Rs 19,350 crore to the creditors of the corporate debtor (that is, BPSL) that comprise over two dozen Indian banks (mainly public sector...

Gurugram: A clutch of former employees of JSW Steel Limited (JSW), headed by Sajjan Jindal, have been hired at senior levels in various offices of the ailing and debt-ridden Bhushan Power and Steel Limited (BPSL) despite the fact that JSW has not released the bid value of Rs 19,350 crore to the creditors of BPSL that comprise over two dozen Indian banks (mainly in the public sector) as well as foreign banks, financial institutions and private entities in the country and abroad. BPSL is a highly...