Yet another corporate war is brewing in bankruptcy courts, with telecom tower company GTL Infrastructure moving the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) against Malaysia’s Maxis owned Aircel Ltd on Monday asking the Tribunal not to allow any of its directors and top management to travel outside India till the matter is settled with its creditors. Aircel owes Rs 170 billion to lenders and Rs 5 billion to GTL Infrastructure.
“We have urged NCLT to take suitable actions to make key officials and management of Aircel accountable for clearing our dues. If a timely action for recovery is not taken then it will impact our receivables,” said a GTL Infra spokesperson. On February 28, this year, Aircel filed for voluntary insolvency as it was unable to repay its dues. On March 12, the NCLT asked the promoters, directors, CMO and members of the board not to leave the country.
GTL on Tuesday asked the NCLT to extend the travel ban to the entire top brass of Aircel.
The NCLT in its earlier order had said the operational creditors like GTL Infrastructure are not “remediless” under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 and can lodge their claim before the resolution professional.
If Aircel shuts down operations, GTL Infrastructure will lose another Rs 120 billion in contractual claims for the remaining period of the contract with Aircel, the company said. In the petition, GTL Infrastructure said three directors of Aircel – Suneetha Reddy, Umesh Jain and Uthaya Kumar resigned from the board just before the company filed for bankruptcy on its own. Under the IBC, it’s the lenders which are moving the NCLT but Aircel decided to file for bankruptcy on its own as it was unable to meet its day-to-day expenditure.
GTL Infra said Aircel made losses mainly due to mismanagement and hence a forensic audit of the company should be ordered. Though the NCLT had asked for a forensic audit during a hearing, but it was inadvertently not recorded in the March 12th order.
According to a source in the banking sector, GTL Infra has also asked its banks, who are also having exposure in Aircel, to help it in its efforts to recover the dues and also investigate the reasons for its voluntary insolvency filing.
In 2010, GTL Infra had paid Rs 82 billion to Aircel to buy its 17,500 towers with 21,000 tenancies. Aircel is GTL Infra’s Customer using towers for its wireless network. Since October last year, Aircel started defaulting on its operational payments to GTL Infra leading to the current stalemate.
Earlier, Aircel had failed to honour its commitments with GTL Infra as it cancelled its 20,000 tenancies in ROFR and agreed to a settlement for Rs 10 billion in 2013.
Source: Business-Standard