NMC CFO exits UAE with family and housemaid on repatriation flight to India

Spread the love

NMC CFO exits UAE with family and housemaid on repatriation flight to India

UAE: The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of NMC Health, which is under investigation for a multi-billion financial fraud, exited the UAE on the first repatriation flight from Abu Dhabi meant for distressed Indians, Khaleej Times has learnt.

A source close to the company confirmed that Suresh Krishnamoorthy and his family – including his wife, twin children and elder son and housemaid flew out on board the Air India Express flight to Kochi on May 7.

The ‘great escape’ by Krishnamoorthy and family along with 360-plus Indian expats has raised questions about transparency and fairness while allotting seats to deserving cases in special flights meant for repatriation. Khaleej Times is awaiting comments from the embassy.

“He sent me a message on Friday morning (the day after the first flight) from Kerala saying he left due to some urgent matters. He said will be back in the UAE in June. He has definitely left the UAE with his whole family,” said the company source.

“He would have escaped for sheer fright that the rot has gone too deep and the long hands of law will reach him sooner or later,” said the source.

The family is currently in their house in Alappuzha, Kerala, and while the elder son is in government quarantine.

Earlier, the Indian ambassador to the UAE Pavan Kapoor told Khaleej Times that the list of passengers is prepared by the embassy on a priority basis, and is handed over to Air India.

The list, a copy of which KT has seen, shows that Krishnamoorthy was on seat 16B, while his family members were allotted other adjacent seats. The tickets were booked under PNR number DDUBEV.

The repatriation flights were launched by the government of India on May 7 as part of a mammoth ‘Vande Baharath Mission’ to bring back stranded Indians. More than 200,000 people from the UAE have registered with the Indian embassy and Indian consulate requesting repatriation on urgent grounds. Terminally ill, jobless, pregnant, and those grieving the death of their own family members are among the expats desperately waiting for their chance to fly home.

False affidavit

While how six members of a family wiggled their way out on a special flight remains a mystery, sources alleged Krishnamoorthy may have furnished a false affidavit to the embassy claiming a death in the family to secure seats.

Sources close to Krishnamoorthy told Khaleej Times that his father is terminally ill with cancer while his mother died in 2018.

“There was no recent death in the family that we know of. Maybe there is a genuine reason that his father is unwell,” said the source.

Not under investigation

According to the source, Krishnamoorthy stepped down as the CFO in 2017 when Prasanth Manghat took over as the NMC CEO.

“He had cited health reasons and his father’s illness to step down, and was given a lighter portfolio of managing acquired assets which required less frequent travel,” said the source.

According to him, Krishnamoorthy was reinstated in February 2020 after the organization’s top tier management exited the country en masse following the disclosure of $4 billion of undeclared debt, landing the Abu-Dhabi-based company into one of the biggest scandals to rock an FTSE 100 entity.

“All top 25 top NMC bosses left the UAE overnight in February. The parent company was left with no one who had the know-how and we requested Krishnamoorthy to return and take up the mantle again,” said a senior company source.

“He was not in the picture when all of this was unfolding. He is not under investigation in the UAE. There are no criminal charges against him either. But I suspect that he may have worried that investigating authorities will dig deeper into 2017 or 2016 files when he was in charge.”


Spread the love

3 Comments

  1. A piddly credit card loan not paid up on time can get you banged up in UAE and to say the person at the heart of $4 billion fraud is allowed to walk past the UAE emigration tells you there are far powerful people involved in this scam.

    This scam goes back by at least 10 years and to say this guy was CFO only until 2017 as a a convenient excuse tells you this is all a hog wash. He was assisted by the local towel heads who are part of this scam.

    The new NMC board (i.e. the bankruptcy administrators) appointed by UK court reached Abu Dhabi 4 days ago and are in 2 weeks mandatory virus quarantine. After the quarantine period they were supposed to go deeper into the NMC accounts to do forensic analysis. So this NMC CFO escape 2 days ago was well-timed. Now the attempt in the UAE social media is being made to blame modi alleging he arranged for the CFO to escape since Shetty is RSS.

    Indian government is running a rescue mission of hundreds and thousands of its citizens in the middle of a global crisis. How are they expected to micromanage everything as to who gets to travel? NMC fraud a crime that took place in UAE and the person traveled was at the heart of the scandal. How can he be allowed to travel? For petty bank loan dues I have heard UAE stops people from leaving the country and they were not aware of this guy? The CB of UAE had ordered all the economic departments to blacklist key people of NMC. This guy should have been on the top of their list. How did they left out this guy? Isn’t that far too convenient? CFO is someone who should be interrogated first in a financial scandal engulfing a company. Look at the farce.

    If this can happen, then I can safely surmise UAE is either a failed state or a rogue state. You can’t say it’s neither. Looks like UAE government wants to cover up this case because their own are also involved in this. They want this case to go away. Only the UAE banks and Western investors and LSE want to go deeper.

  2. Another bombshell –

    It has come to light the main accused in NMC scandal is about to default on Rs. 2000 crore loan from Bank of Baroda/Vijaya bank. Pledge/collateral was his Indian real estate. Now he can’t give “fraudulent signatures by rogue employees” excuse, can he? He is in all likelihood going to end up on the streets. Hopefully he has a non-pledged house which is transferred to his kin so he can spend his remaining years in dignity.

    And he can’t run away to London either because the UK police will welcome him with open arms.

    As regards the “escape” of this NMC CFO in the first Covid rescue flight, if he wasn’t assisted by the UAE locals in escaping then how come the UAE authorities have not given a press statement or contacted Interpol? This is all drama. In fact the Kerala journalists even contacted the CFO’s relatives to verify the “death in the family” excuse and it turns out to be a blatant falsehood. Nobody in his family had died in the recent past. His mother died years ago while his father is ailing.

  3. Talking about this 2000 crore loan, as I said, the collateral is his various real estate assets in India but I am fairly confident the valuation of those assets was when the real estate was at its peak and it was bogus. Now with the oncoming, assured recession the real estate is going to collapse and may come to 25% of its market peak value. So 2000 crore Bank of Baroda collateral might only be worth 500 crore when its auctioned. So Bank of Baroda is going to have to take a massive hit on their balance sheet. The news is that they have already obtained an Indian court order to attach/freeze all those properties.

    I have never been a fan of booming real estate (In fact I have been its vocal critic for several years) booming real estate gives a false sense of prosperity to the nation and helps crooks get fraudulent loans using that real estate as over-priced collateral. Now banks will get everything they deserve. Chances are that he has taken out similar loans in several other Indian banks too, it’s just that we are yet to hear about them. Banking regulations in India are lax in the sense that it allows banks to conceal toxic loans from disclosure for several years and the public gets to know about them only at the last stages when banks can no longer recoup any money from the borrower. It’s been that way for several decades and our dear Modi-G hasn’t done anything meaningful on that front. Instead his government encourages banks to be reckless because Modi has this bogus 5 trillion dollar economy vision but looking at the way things are going we may indeed get a 5 trillion dollar economy but the currency is going to be Zimbabwean Dollars instead of USD.

    This pandemic has given a massive kick in the guts to the commercial real estate. Now working from home is going to be the norm. Companies like Wipro, TCS have already announced that, with or without virus, 75% of their workforce will be permanently WFH by 2022 – that implies other companies will follow suit – which means commercial real estate will collapse by 75%. In fact there is no need anymore for real estate in big cities. White collar jobs can be done from people’s native places as long as they have internet and phone.

    So, in short, this 2000 crore Bank of Baroda loan is goooooooooooovinda. Let’s see how many other Indian banks come forward with disclosures.

Comments are closed.