The Supreme Court has today sentenced the former Ranbaxy promoters Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh for 6 months of imprisonment for contempt of court. A fine of Rs 5000 was also imposed upon them by the top court.
Both the brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh were arrested by the Economic offenses Wing of the Delhi police. They were arrested for allegedly diverting diverting the money of Religare Finvest Limited (RFL), an REL subsidiary moand causing loss of over Rs 2,397 crore.
The allegations cast on the Singh brothers is that they along with other officials of REL, took loans in the name of RFL and diverted the money to other companies. Which as per RFL caused company losses of Rs 2,387 crore.
The allegation is against these two brothers who had inexplicably managed to squander a whopping Rs 22,500 crore over just one decade.
The Singh brothers had sold Ranbaxy to a Japanese pharma giant Daiichi Sankyo in 2008 for which the company earned a windfall amount Rs 9,576 crore.This was a short lived happiness as few years after the sale they ran into troubles after Daiichi accused them of concealing certain information and dragged them to an international court.
The accused Malvinder and Shivinder Singh were hiding information regarding regulatory problems Ranbaxy was facing in the United States of America.
The case was strong and the brothers ultimately lost the case in which the Singapore tribunal ordered them to pay $500 million which roughly comes to around 4000 crores rupees.
The case then reached to the Supreme Court which clearly mentioned that in case of non payment , the accused shall be sent to jail. The brothers were instructed to pay the tribunal award.
Those who were amongst the successful businessmen and featured on the Forbes’ list of billionaires, are now staring at the prospect of spending at least the next few days in jail.