Process for Aamby Valley auction starts at Rs 37,392 crore reserve price
Subrata Roy Subrata Roy
Days after the Supreme Court directive, the official liquidator of the Bombay High Court on Monday started the process for the auction of Sahara Group’s Aamby Valley City in Lonavala in Pune. The notice by the official liquidator has pegged the reserve price of the property at Rs 37,392 crore.
“The official liquidator hereby invites the prospective bidder (s) to submit their KYC form and on qualification, invites bids from intending bidders along with an amount of 15 per cent of the reserve price as earnest money to be paid through RTGS or NEFT for the sale of the Aamby Valley City….,” said the notice issued by Vinod Sharma, official liquidator of Bombay High Court. According to the notice, the sale of Aamby Valley will be conducted in two phases over two days.
The property to be auctioned is an integrated hill city township spread over 6,761.6 acres, and two land parcels of 1,409.8 acres and 321.6 acres.
The auction will be conducted through MSTC Ltd. The Supreme Court on August 10 rejected Sahara chief Subrata Roy’s plea to allow the firm to repay its investors till July 2019. The court allowed the auction of Sahara’s property saying its doesn’t believe that Sahara will pay Rs 1,500 crore, if the auction process was halted or postponed.
Earlier, the apex court had directed Sahara to deposit Rs 1,500 crore in SEBI-Sahara account by September 7 to establish his bona fide.
A Mauritius-based investor, Royale Partners Investment Fund, last week said it has offered to invest $1.67 billion (over ?10,700 crore) in Sahara group’s Aamby Valley project. Sahara group pegs the market valuation of this project at over Rs.100000 crore.
In 2011, Sebi alleged that the Sahara Group has raised over Rs 20,000 crore from 30 million investors illegally. The Supreme Court had in August 2012 ordered the Lucknow-based conglomerate to deposit with the regulator over Rs 24,000 crore collected from nearly three crore investors through issuance of some bonds. Interestingly, in the case of Sahara Group, not many investors have come forward to claim refunds.
Sahara chief, Roy was sent to jail on May 4, 2014, for not complying with the order of the apex court. He has is currently out
on parole.
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