RAM TERI GANGA MOILY
J Gopikrishnan / New Delhi
March 18, 2013
Union Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily could be in the dock for raising funds for his family controlled trust from a corporate giant when he was Corporate Affairs Minister. Moily faces another serious case of conflict of interest as a top official of Reliance Industries is advisor to a company controlled by Moily’s son Harsha Moily. Even earlier, the Minister has faced charges of favouring Reliance in the KG basin case.
Veerappa Moily has been president of Kissan Sabha Trust (KST), which received huge funds from ITC from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget in September 2012. His son Harsha Moily’s email message to his partner Sudhir P clearly showed that Moily himself managed the fund from the ITC for his private trust.
“Sudhir — Dad just called and confirmed that ITC has approved the funding the operating expenses of KST (Kissan Sabha Trust) for the next five years. Therefore, for ITC to process the payments, we have to immediately furnish ITC all OpEx bills for Karkala & Chikaballarpur for the academic year 2011-12. Request you to do the needful,” said the email message, which was also forwarded to Moily’s official email vmoily@ kar.nic.in.
The subject of the message was Capital Budget for Kissan Sabha Trust for Funding. The Kissan Sabha Trust is a family-controlled trust of Moily. It was established decades ago and is running educational institutes and charitable organisations in Karkala and Chikaballarpur in Karnataka. In addition to Moily, his wife Malathy, son Harsha and daughter Sushma too are members of the trust.
“The total capital cost for Karkala school comes to `1.71 crore and for Chikkaballarpur school `3.10 crore. Total capital cost comes to `4.81 crore…. For operating the schools, our budget right now is `50 lakh for this year and will increase with PUC students getting admitted. Hence we may ask for a corpus fund of `6 crore to fund the day to day operations @ 8% per annum,” said an earlier email sent by Sudhir to Harsha Moily. The email messages between the duo talk about approaching the corporate sector for the requirements of the trust.
The person, Sudhir P, referred in this mail is Sudhir K Prabhu. He is also a Director in one of the companies run by Moily’s son and the Karnataka branch head of a Mumbai-based Chartered Accountant’s firm, which audits companies of Harsha Moily.
The documents available with The Pioneer show that Harsha Moily is/was Promoter and Director of four companies, whose business flourished after Moily became Cabinet Minister in May 2009. The account of one of his companies shows an unsecured loan of `6 crore from an unknown source. Moksha-Yug Access India Private Limited is one of the major companies run by Harsha.
The company which faced fund crunch after it was established way back in 2005, literally got “Moksha” after Veerappa Moily landed in Union Cabinet in 2009 as Law Minister, then moved to Corporate Affairs Minister with additional charge of Power, and finally shifted to the coveted Petroleum and Natural Gas portfolio.
The Moksha-Yug Access (MYA), started as a supply chain company of rural products, is currently concentrating on milk supply. The company, which was floated by Harsha and his sister Hamsa, handles more than one lakh litre of milk supply every day.
And here comes the Reliance connection. The website of the company claims that one Mr Ananth Ravi, President of Reliance Industries, is their Advisor.
“Mr Ananth Ravi advises MYA on finance related matters. He has led the Project Finance team of Reliance in the financing of billion dollar projects in telecom, petroleum and retail sectors. He was also instrumental in setting up the Reliance’s telecom venture, Reliance Infocomm operations in Karnataka. He brings to MYA, his vast experience in project management and finance,” says the company’s website.
Around 50 per cent of this company’s shares are held by US and Mauritius-based funds, while Harsha owns around 20 per cent stakes. Well-known companies like Bharat Forge and Jubilant Agro are stakeholders or Directors Board of this company.
MYA Financial Services Private Limited, Rural Crystals Educational Services Private Limited and MVH Holdings are the other three companies where Harsha and Moily’s other family members are Directors.
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