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Journalism of Courage
The Supreme Court on Thursday gave Sahara chief Subrata Roy a 15-day extension to stay in Tihar Jail court complex to negotiate sale of his overseas luxury hotels to raise Rs 10,000 crore to secure bail.
Roy was on August 1 allowed to stay in the makeshift office in prison and use the conference room in the jail complex for 10 days to enable him to hold negotiations with potential buyers to sell his three luxury hotels — Dream Downtown and The Plaza in New York and Grosvenor House in London — to raise the money, half in cash and half in the form of bank guarantee.
A three-judge special Bench headed by Justice TS Thakur granted Roy and the other two directors 15 more days, excluding weekends and public holidays, to finalise the deals, subject to a condition that no further extensions will be given. “Draw a plan and work accordingly,” the Bench said, cautioning Sahara that besides Rs 10,000 crore bail amount, it has to arrange rest of the refund money.
The court noted the Sahara counsel’s arguments that all negotiations have reached near settlement between the seller and the buyers, and the contemnors would be in a position to conclude the negotiations soon.
Senior counsel S Ganesh, appearing for Roy, said the Sahara chief was holding negotiations with buyers and the group has signed a preliminary memoranda of agreements for the three hotels.
“In-principle agreement has been reached with a foreign party for the sale of three hotel properties and a draft memorandum of agreement has also been drawn up in this regard. Further, the applicants have also managed to obtain an in-principle approval of a foreign bank for the grant of a bank guarantee for the amount of $850 million equivalent to Rs 5,000 crore through a tie-up with an Indian scheduled bank,” the senior counsel argued. FE
