The saga of a Siddhapurush / Himalayan yogi guiding decisions of the managing director (MD) of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) drowned out new findings in another equally huge scam whose investigation is dragging exactly like the co-location (Colo) scam. The forensic audit of IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd (ITNL), the largest step-down subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) which imploded in September 2018, was released just two days before the order of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on NSE, but barely got any media coverage or detailed analysis.
ITNL had submitted Grant Thornton’s (GT’s) forensic audit of ITNL that runs to nearly 900 tedious pages of repetitive narration and, so, ends up dampening the enormity of lawlessness at IL&FS, ITNL and its 347 group entities. In many ways, IL&FS was exactly like NSE. An ostensibly ‘professionally’ run company, set up by pedigreed institutions and banks with a luminous board that abdicated its fiduciary duties by delegating absolute power to the chairman/vice-chairman/managing director, while collecting very hefty sitting fees and huge perks. There was one big difference. IL&FS had several step-down holding companies that were listed on stock exchanges and ought to have been under better scrutiny by institutional investors, investment analysts and mutual funds but preferred to rely on dubious ratings.
