Fortis Healthcare Issue Under ICAI’s ‘Consideration Zone’
ICAI to closely eye Fortis Healthcare fund siphoning issue, but will wait for more details to emerge.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India is closely watching the matter of financial irregularities at Fortis Healthcare Ltd. and will look into it as soon as more details are available.
“We have this matter in our consideration zone. As soon as the details would be received by us, our board of discipline will look into it,” ICAI President Naveen N D Gupta said today. “But as of now we do not have any information”.
India’s second largest hospital chain, Fortis, was issued notices by the stock exchanges after a Bloomberg report said that the promoters, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, took at least $78 million (about Rs 500 crore at current exchange rate) out of the publicly-traded company without board approval about a year ago.
We don’t have any facts about this. It is only material in the newspapers, we have not received any material. We have a very robust system, the moment anything appears it automatically sets into motion.Naveen N D Gupta, President, ICAI
Fortis Healthcare has said that its wholly-owned arm Fortis Hospitals had deployed funds to the tune of Rs 473 crore as secured short-term investments to group firms of its promoters.
The media report also said that the company's auditor, Deloitte Haskins and Sells LLP, had refused to sign on the company's second quarter results until the funds were accounted for or returned.