NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced former Ranbaxy promoters Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh to 6 months imprisonment in a case connected with the sale of shares of Fortis to Malaysia-based IHH Healthcare.
A bench, headed by Chief Justice U.U. Lalit, declined to lift its stay on the open offer by IHH Healthcare Berhad for a 26 percent stake in Fortis Healthcare. It asked the Delhi High Court to issue remand in the case and also ordered a forensic audit of the Fortis-IIH deal. "Everything goes back to the executing court," it said.
The former promoters of Fortis Healthcare Ltd were embroiled in a court battle after Daiichi Sankyo, a Japanese firm, had challenged the Fortis-IHH share deal to recover the Rs 3,600 crore arbitration award that it had won before a Singapore tribunal against the Singh brothers.
Due to a legal fight between Daiichi Sankyo and the former promoters of Fortis Healthcare, the IHH-Fortis deal is stuck. The top court also slapped the Singh brothers with a fine in the contempt case filed against them by the Japanese firm. Daiichi Sankyo moved the court to enforce the arbitral award passed by a Singapore tribunal in 2016. The Delhi High Court, in January 2018, ruled that the arbitration award won by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers for concealing information about the erstwhile Ranbaxy Laboratories, was enforceable in India.
In 2018, IHH Healthcare had acquired a 31 per cent controlling stake in Fortis, which triggered a mandatory open offer to acquire another 26 per cent of Fortis shares from the market. However, the open offer could not move forward due to ongoing legal proceedings with respect to the transaction based on a plea filed by Daiichi Sankyo. (IANS)
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