In the second sensational disclosure within a week dominated by a high profile ITC probe, Shaw Wallace was raided by a Enforcement Directorate team headed by topnotch official Benu Pani.
The secretarial and liquor divisions were raided, searched and sealed, said Benu Pani to journalists late in the evening. He said some documents which establish irregularities have been seized.
The raid was carried out only in Calcutta. The residence of former executive director Srinivasan was also raided.
The directorate also continued its interrogation of Nem Chand Jain, a Guwahati-based broker allegedly involved in routing funds abroad on behalf of the Shaw Wallace management.
Shaw Wallace was also witness to a sudden, brief visit by managing director Ravi K Jain. He visited the office between 9-40 a.m and 10 a.m when the enforcement team had already arrived.
Benu Pani later told reporters that while the directorate was aware that the managing director, based in Mumbai, was visiting, they neither met him nor sought to do so during the day. "We will interact with him when the time comes", he said.
Senior former executive director of Shaw Wallace, P L Narasimhan, fell ill on Wednesday and had to be admitted to a city nursing home.
The raids follow three to four days of extensive grilling by Enforcement Directorate officials of a number of top Shaw Wallace executives those interrogated over the last few days are believed to include Narasimhan, former executive director Pradeep Mathur, and senior executives Ravi Shankar and Padma Nabhaiah.
Wallace House, Shaw Wallace headquarters in Calcutta, bore a quiet look during the day. "The Directorate officials did not search every department in the office, but the panic was felt by all of us", said a senior executive on conditions of anonymity.
Early in the day, a Shaw Wallace spokesperson based in New Delhi, obviously not yet in full possession of the facts on the ground in Calcutta, said in a fax message in response to a Business Standard questionnaire on the raid that there was in fact no raid, but an enforcement team had visited the office and wanted to speak to former directors. The fax also claimed that no documents had been seized as of then.
Benu Pani confirmed several hours later that a raid had indeed been carried out and certain documents establishing irregularities had been seized.
The enforcement officials intend to summon Shaw Wallace chairman MR Chhabria.
Shaw Wallace is already facing a large number of pending intercorporate deposit default cases in various courts, and at one stage the number of winding up petitions that had piled up numbered more than 60.
It is also facing charges of siphoning out of funds similar to the ones that may now be made by the Directorate from its workers' unions.
