During a raid conducted by officials at the Registrar of company (ROC), a small office in Hyderabad’s Jubilee Hills area and found 25 employees running 114 companies out of a single room. What fascinated the officials was the fact that a majority of the entities are owned by family members of B Ramalinga Raju, the man who pulled off India’s biggest corporate fraud, the Satyam Scam.
The registered address of SRSR Advisory Advisory Services Private Limited (a financial services firm) has been a tiny office in Fortune Monarch Mall, Jubilee Hills. The firm operated from six locations in Hyderabad, The officials found that most of the firms were links to Raju and his relatives.
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According to the officials raiding the office claimed that it was probably the largest number of companies registered with one company in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. “It’s premature to call them shell companies, but prima facie evidence suggests financial wrongdoings. We will have to look at the documents, evaluate and come to conclusions,” he said.
A ROC official said, “According to rules, any person can be a member of 20 registered companies. We are checking whether this rule has been violated as the same people figure as directors in many of these companies. The charge sheet filed by ED and CBI against these firms are separate issues. We are looking into it from ‘shell companies’ angle,” said the ROC official.
“All these companies are named in CBI and ED chartsheets. ED has attached assets. The companies are active, but not operational. We have been filing zero balance sheets for most. We can’t close these companies as the assets will be returned to them if cases against them are struck down.
As SRSR Advisory Services is an accounting firm helping these companies, they are all functioning from the same address. It is not an offense to have many companies at the address.’ SRSR Advisory Services officials said.