Manpasand Beverages’ New Auditor Suspects Fraud Even As Promoter Looks To Sell Stake
Manpasand Beverages says Finquest will acquire 22.16 percent stake in the company from promoter Dhirendra Singh.
The newly appointed auditor of Manpasand Beverages Ltd. has suspected fraud at the maker of MangoSip, prompting its board to order a forensic audit even as its promoter looks to divest stake.
Batliboi & Purohit, which replaced Manpasand’s previous auditor Mehra Goel & Co. on Aug. 2, has come across several discrepancies in financial statements related to sales, purchases, expenses, GST returns, debtors and creditors accounts, among others, the company informed the exchanges.
Finquest Financial Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which had lent Rs 100 crore to the company, drew similar conclusions based on an independent study. Manpasand Beverages has decided to appoint an independent forensic auditor to scrutinise financials of its last three fiscals within the next 45 days.
In the filing, Manpasand Beverages also said Finquest will acquire nearly 22.16 percent stake in the company from its promoter Dhirendra Singh, who had in June offered to step down from day-to-day operations of the company. The promoter had entered into a call option agreement to sell half of his stake.
As of quarter-ended June 30, Singh held 44.32 percent stake in the company, none of which was pledged.
Manpasand Beverages has been in the eye of a storm after its shares declined over 90 percent in the past year on tax probes, auditor and top-level exits. Top officials of the company were arrested in May by the Goods and Services Tax department for an alleged Rs 40-crore fake invoice scam.
Mehra Goel & Co. was the company’s second auditor to resign in over a year. The audit firm was appointed after Deloitte Haskins & Sells stepped down as the company’s auditor in May 2018, stating that the company wasn’t sharing “significant information”.