Maytas Infra Ltd, the troubled infrastructure company promoted by the family of Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju, is making efforts to recover Rs 380 crore inter-corporate debt from Satyam Computer Services, according to Maytas Chairman K Ramalingam.
Disclosing this to the media after the company’s board meeting here today, he said Maytas Infra lent the amount to 14-15 other companies that were under its control and they, in turn, put it in Satyam.
There was documentary proof for all the money that went out of Maytas Infra, he said, clarifying that the companies to which the money was lent were not its subsidiaries.
However, Ramalingam did not disclose how many of these 14 companies belonged to Raju. It was yet to be ascertained if the money given by Maytas to the borrowing companies to be routed to Satyam was from the initial public offer (IPO) funds. The government-appointed board was working on options to recover the money, he said.
Along with Ramalingam, government appointed directors Anil Agarwal and Ved Jain were present at the Maytas Infra board meeting. The board did not make any recommendation for selling a stake in Maytas Infra to the corporate affairs ministry.
“The stake sale is not on the agenda at this point in time,” the board members said, while replying to a query if the board was open to the idea of selling a stake in Maytas Infra.
The company is set to receive Rs 100 crore capital under the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) package in about a month. This would ease its liquidity position and allow it to accelerate various projects. Under the CDR package, a non-fund assistance of Rs 200 crore in the form of bank guarantees was also approved.
The company is also hoping that it would get an additional Rs 100 crore capital infusion and Rs 200 crore non-fund assistance. It has recoverables of about Rs 400 crore from various vendors.
Ramalingam said the company was in talks with the Andhra Pradesh government on the Machilipatnam Port issue, for which it had not achieved financial closure. He said there were some contractual obligations on part of the state government and the company was keen to execute the project. It would achieve financial closure in about 45 days, he said.
The board members also denied any involvement of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in getting the nod for Maytas Infra to execute the Shimoga and Gulbarga airports and two projects of Power Grid Corporation Limited.
It clarified that it would go ahead with the execution of the airport projects irrespective of the consortium members’ stand on them.
