Aravind Maiya, former CEO of Embassy REIT, was suspended by SEBI due to his involvement in a past fraud case. Maiya was an auditor for Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd (CCD), where the founder, VG Siddhartha, embezzled money by writing fraudulent cheques to his own company. Maiya failed to identify these fraudulent activities, claiming he was not responsible for auditing CCD’s subsidiaries. Despite being found guilty of professional misconduct, penalized, and debarred from being an auditor, Embassy REIT initially resisted SEBI’s order for Maiya to step down, arguing that their CEO did not need to meet the “fit and proper person” criteria. Eventually, Maiya was reassigned to the role of Head of Strategy.
The founder of CCD, VG Siddhartha, stole money from the company by writing cheques to his own company, Mysore Amalgamated Coffee Estates. He used pre-signed cheques from CCD’s CFO and deposited them into his bank account. Despite the fact that Mysore Amalgamated Coffee Estates had a revenue of less than a few crores, Siddhartha paid more than a thousand crores in advance to purchase coffee beans from the company. Maiya, the auditor responsible for ensuring CCD’s financials were correct, failed to identify these fraudulent activities, claiming that he was not responsible for auditing CCD’s subsidiaries.
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