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NAGPUR: Annual documents submitted by Purti Power and Sugar Limited and its 18 ’shell’ shareholding companies to the registrar of companies reveal that chartered accountant S Gurumurthy may have been hasty in giving a double clean chit to Nitin Gadkari. The BJP national president continues to maintain that he has done no wrong and is open to an inquiry.

Papers accessed by TOI from the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) show that there are at least six instances which directly link Gadkari to the holding companies through his family members and aides. They include his wife Kanchan, sons Nikhil and Sarang, nephew Sandip Bhurchandi, vice-chairman of Purti Jaykumar Varma and driver Manohar Panse.

The documents reveal that all of them were shareholders and directors in many of the holding companies at one time or the other. This establishes that people close to Gadkari were in control of the holding companies that continue to have huge investments in Purti and Mahatma Sugar and Power Limited, another company set up by Gadkari.

Gurumurthy, an RSS ideologue, had informed BJP functionaries recently that the investments by 18 shell companies were actually the handiwork of Manish Mehta, a businessman originally from Nagpur, now settled in Mumbai. Putting the entire blame on Mehta, Gurumurthy claimed that it was the businessman who had put Rs 47-odd crore in Purti when he exited.

Mehta was a director in Purti between July 7, 2000 and December 3, 2002, and from December 29, 2010 to September 28, 2011. According to a recent list provided by Purti MD Sudhir Dive, Mehta’s name does not appear in the list of current directors.

In the first instance, Kanchan, Nikhil and Sarang, and Bhurchandi were shareholders in three shell companies (Jasika Mercantile, Jainaam Mercantile and Neelay Mercantile) in 2009-10 when the BJP chief was chairman and director of Purti between April 10, 2000 and August 27, 2011. Having resigned last year, Gadkari now owns only 310 shares as per the document provided by Dive.

Bhurchandi is the son of Gadkari’s elder sister. As reported by TOI on October 28, his residence is the registered address of Buldhana Sugar and Power Private Limited, which though not part of the Purti Group, has Gadkari’s driver and a certain Shekhar Kotwaliwale as directors.

A common pattern seen in the three companies with Gadkari’s family members is that the two persons (Amit Pandey and Rahul Dubey) who set up the ’shell’ companies transfered the shares to Kanchan, Nikhil and Sarang, Burchandi and two other corporate companies within one to three months after the companies were set up. Around the same time, Diwan Kawdu Zade and Purti employees Nishant Agnihotri and Sagar Kotwaliwale, came in as directors.

When Gurumurthy claimed that Gadkari has no "direct or indirect interest in the 18 investment companies which have invested in the Purti", he was not strictly wrong as records available with TOI show that the BJP president’s family members have already exited the company in 2010-11, a year after it was set up.

It’s also observed that the flurry of activity to change addresses in Mumbai and Kolkata, change directors and their addresses, and e-mail IDs took place only after Kanchan, Nikhil and Sarang, and Bhurchandi transfered their shares.

Also, the three companies with Gadkari’s family members as shareholders have invested money in Mahatma Sugar and Power, which falls under the Purti Group. The shares they hold do not tally in the different documents submitted by Purti, Mahatma and the three shell companies.

For example, in the 2010-11 balance sheet of Neelay Mercantile, one of the three shell companies, it is shown as having invested Rs 1.50 lakh in Purti and Rs 55 lakh in Mahatma. However, in Purti’s balance sheet for the same period, Neelay’s investment is shown as Rs 15 lakh. In Mahatma’s balance sheet, Neelay has a Rs 1.72 crore investment. There is no explanation for the additional funds coming into Purti and Mahatma.

In the past couple of years, the directors of the holding companies, their addresses as well as those of the companies and the email IDs have flitted from Nagpur to Mumbai to Kolkata to Delhi. Recently, the income-tax department began questioning directors in some of the holding companies, in Mumbai and Kolkata.

In the second instance, the documents with MCA show that 14 of the 18 holding companies of Purti had its vice chairman Varma as director and with Nagpur addresses from 2001-2009. He continues to be a BJP zilla parishad member from Bela village, which is adjacent to Khursapar, the area where Purti’s sugar and power plants are situated.

When Purti vice-chairman Varma became the director of Ashwami Sales and Marketing, which is also one of Purti’s holding companies, on September 13, 2004, he mentioned in documents submitted to ROC that he was a director in 15 companies, 14 of which are part of Purti’s investors. The remaining one is Purti Sakhar Karkhana Limited, which was renamed Purti Power and Sugar.

In the third instance, the Ashwami auditor’s report mentions that an advance of Rs 50,000 was given to Gadkari in 2009-10.

In the fourth instance, Ashwami’s registered office address was 26, 1st floor, Madhu Madhav complex, Gokulpeth until March 30, 2012. The office is operated by one of the personal assistants of Gadkari, Sudhir Deulgaonkar. In some documents, a Mumbai location is also shown as the company’s registered address.

Coincidentally, three floors above in the same building is the office of Last Mile Infrastructure, which is the 18th holding company in Purti. Last Mile was set up by Arun Lakhani, who was one of the seven promoters of Purti. Lakhani runs a few projects on the public private partnership model for the BJP-run Nagpur Municipal Corporation.

In the fifth instance, driver Panse’s residential address 212/A Kanchan Regency, Flat no. G-1, Mahal, which is very close to the RSS headquarters in Mahal, is declared as Ashwami’s property. The driver’s name is displayed in the flat-owners’ list on the ground floor of the building. Panse, however, is shown as residing at Santi Road, Itwari High School, Itwari (Nagpur) in all the 11 companies in which he was a director.

And in the sixth instance, Panse’s flat has been mortgaged by Ashwami to Shikshak Sahakari Bank for a loan obtained with the help of Purti Marketing Private Limited, which is part of the Purti Group.

Over the last several days, TOI has conducted investigations in several cities across India to get details about the Gadkari-promoted Purti Group and its investment companies. It has come to light that the source of money had been buried under several layers of fictitious companies numbering more than 100.