NEW DELHI: Upkeep of VVIP bungalows in
the elite Lutyens Zone has cost the public exchequer around Rs 100 crore in the
last five years.

In reply to an RTI plea, the government said that in
the last five years, Rs 93.50 crore was spent on maintenance and renovation of
the bungalows let out to Members of Parliament and ministers.

“An
amount of Rs 93.50 crore has been spent towards upgradation, ordinary repair and
superior repair of these bungalows by CPWD responsible for upkeep of the MP
bungalows,” the Directorate of Estates said in its reply.

“MPs are
provided with free accommodation throughout the term of office. However, a
normal licence fee of Rs 105 is charged on a bungalow,” it added.

A
total of 77 bungalows have been alloted to different ministers
here.

According to the reply, nearly Rs 11 crore was spent on upkeep
of these bungalows in 2004-2005, Rs 9 crore the next year followed by Rs 20
crore in 2006-2007 and Rs 33 crore in 2007-2008. CPWD has spent Rs 21 crore till
June 2009 on the maintenance of these bungalows.

The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), which undertook a mega investigation into the multi-crore Satyam (SATYAM.BO : 119.55 +0.3) fraud, has concluded that a company known for its exemplary performance and innovative management was bankrupted due to the “dirty face of its promoters who cooked up the books of accounts for the past several years.” The SFIO, which prepared an investigation report which runs into thousands of pages (including annexures), has revealed that the audacious falsification of accounts began eight years ago, that is in 2001. After a scrutiny of Indian and foreign bank accounts and statements and questioning scores of people on oath, the SFIO has discovered that Satyam Computer Services Limited was in the red and recorded losses from 2007-08 onwards. Despite committing financial falsifications, the company’s promoters blatantly showed receipt of interest on non-existent fixed deposits and as the report notes, “also paid corporate taxes on such non-existent accrued interest just to avoid detection of the fraud perpetuated by them for the past several years…details of non-existent interest calculated on the basis of the details obtained by the company in juxtaposition with the confirmations directly received by the banks.” An amount of Rs 186.90 crore was discovered to have been paid as excess corporate taxes, and thereby another fraud was committed on the company and its stakeholders. Giving the genesis of the scam, the SFIO’s findings are that “conspiracy” to artificially and substantially jack-up the revenues and profits in account books began with the promoters deliberately leaving loopholes in the accounting software packages of the company. The report portions of which are with The Indian Express describes how the promoters used ‘admin’ login IDs and generated fictitious invoices in the Invoice Management System, which could be concealed from the view of their employees, using ‘admin’ and ’super’ login IDs. These IDs, meant for single users, could be used by a group of hand-picked employees, at a time, and (since) there was poor password security and since the passwords were seldom changed. With this modus operandi, the actual financial scam began to unravel as the SFIO notes “in order to camouflage fictitious collections, the collections were first accounted as receipts in bank books in the current account maintained with Bank of Baroda, New York branch and subsequently they were shown to have been transferred to other bank accounts as fixed deposits.” The report also analyses reasons for the fraud being made public by Ramalinga Raju via his e-mail dated January 7, 2009. The “trigger” according to the SFIO was an email dated December 18, 2008 sent by senior executive, Jose Abraham (since resigned) to independent director KG Palepu, who in turn forwarded the same to M Rammohan Rao, chairman of the audit committee of Satyam. Ramamohan Rao, in turn, forwarded the email to other members of the audit committee and also to S Gopalakrishna, statutory auditor and also to Ramalinga Raju. The SFIO’s conclusion on Raju’s confessional act is that “Knowing that the fraudulent activities had come to the notice of many people and also apprehending action by regulatory agencies like SEC in the US and Sebi in India, Ramalinga Raju himself came out with his revelations…”

The government has proposed a penalty of over Rs 41 crore (Rs 410 million) on Tatas, Rs 31 crore (Rs 310 million) on Airtel and Rs 19.65 crore (Rs 196.5 million) on RCom and others, totalling Rs 135.60 crore (Rs 1.35 billion), for not rolling out network on time

New Delhi, Sep 15 (IANS) Having made critically acclaimed films like ‘Kanchivaram’, production house Percept Picture Company (PPC) is aiming high – offering Indian cinema with global appeal.

‘We want to create world cinema out of India. We tried ‘Firaaq’ and ‘Kanchivaram’ as a very amateur step and succeeded. Now we will create a commercial film for the world in an Indian language and target the global consumer,’ said Shailendra Singh, joint managing director of PPC.

The studio also has 15 movies lined up, of which nine are ready to hit the screen.

‘While ‘Firaaq’ has won 14 awards, ‘Kanchivaram’ has won the National Award for the best film and for us as a film studio, it doesn’t get bigger. We are terribly excited,’ Singh told IANS in an interview.

Asked about the studio’s choice of making a regional film like ‘Kanchivaram’, which is in Tamil, Singh said: ‘It’s about picking the right subject that appeals to more people.

‘Hollywood makes its scripts with global sensibilities and we make it with local sensibilities. But ‘Kanchivaram’ deals with a father-daughter relationship and the plot itself is universal.’

Most of PPC’s line-up of 15 movies are commercial. ‘We’ve got nine negatives ready for release. One or two are under production and among the remaining, four will go into production in 2010. We’ve got films lined up till April and every month we will have a new product,’ said Singh.

‘We have got an inventory of nearly Rs.200 crore (Rs.2 billion) to be released. We hope we succeed because if we don’t, we will not shut down but will definitely go slow,’ he added.

Some of the forthcoming movies include ‘Jail’, ‘24X7 Raftaar’, ‘Yeh Hosla’, ‘Raat Gayi Baat Gayi?’, ‘Bum Bum Bole’, ‘Grrrr’ and ‘8′.

Singh admitted that bringing the movies on board during an economic slowdown has not been easy.

‘We’ve lost 50 percent of our revenue, courtesy recession. Our product was Rs.500 crore (Rs.5 billion), it has now become Rs.200 crore (Rs.2 billion). Overnight our digital, satellite, music…all (income) gone, so it’s only theatrical now,’ he said.

‘And for that you get only one-third share, which means for the investment to recover, a movie should do three-times the business, which is next to impossible. We have also fallen short of syndication.’

Singh added that unlike other studios, PPC doesn’t believe in rushing its content.

‘We do things nice and steady, but we do it very calculatedly. We released ‘Jannat’ at IPL (Indian Premier League) time, ‘Malaamal Weekly’ during exams, and ‘Hanuman’ in the middle of Muharram.

‘We believe in right date, right time, right price and kind of thinking. We are not in a rush to release our films. Every Friday, six-eight films are releasing and becoming flops…we are not into that hara-kiri,’ said Singh.

He pointed out that umbrella content packaging – where the same content caters to different audiences – is now passe.

‘In India, the consumer is fragmented. There are different economic class groups and there are different social groups. We have to cater to all of them in a customised manner and price it accordingly. There cannot be one content for everybody…that stage is over now,’ he explained.

Highlighting PPC’s strategy, Singh said: ‘At the end of the day, the agenda for PPC is clean, good and healthy content with value for money. We believe in creativity and content. We feel that somewhere down the line, the consumer wants a good story told well at the right price and we are running a marathon.’

PPC also plans to release Priyadarshan’s ‘Kanchivaram’ in select theatres across the country by October-end.

(Robin Bansal can be contacted at robin.b@ians.in)

Wednesday September 9, 04:20 PM

Source: Financial Express

SBI looks at 35% growth in Q2 profit
India’s largest state-owned bank, State Bank of India (SBIN.NS : 1894.75 +0.7) (SBI), is expected to witness an increase in net profit of about 30-35% year-on-year in its July to September quarter. At the end of the first fiscal quarter, its net profit grew 42.03% at Rs 2,330 crore, compared to Rs 1,641 crore during the corresponding quarter a year ago. Chairman OP Bhatt said treasury income for the bank could not be hurt this quarter given a sharp spike in bond yields. Bhatt noted that they have yet not incurred any kind of “mark-to-market” losses in the treasury for the July to September quarter. “It all depends on how the 10-year government security yields rise,” said Bhatt. He was speaking on the sidelines of a banking seminar organised by Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci). The SBI chairman also noted that since July, the bank has witnessed a growth in credit by Rs 5,000 crore a month. “We need to consolidate, raise capital and need to have two-three more banks bigger than the size of SBI or half a dozen banks of the size of SBI, to support large corporations within the country,” said Bhatt. He added that anything that appeared to be risky during the financial crisis should be regulated now, quoting examples of non-banking financial companies, banks and mutual funds. “Systemic regulation of important entities, including non-financial entities like aviation and telecom, should also be done,” said Bhatt. Talking about the ability to serve large Indian corporations, Bhatt strongly noted that Indian banks are not in a position to serve large companies, as their capital is too small. “In my point of view, even SBI is not large enough to finance big firms. Our capital is too small to enable us to do that,” said Bhatt. He also noted that its credit growth in April to June was flat on account of a high base, as the bank had seen huge retail growth in the first quarter of 2008-09. “On a positive note, there was also huge repayment from oil and food companies in the first quarter of 2009-10,” he added.