Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFL), on Monday, disclosed that the Income Tax Department’s Investigation Wing has issued a notice to the company seeking information / evidence on certain aspects of its books of accounts.

In response to stock exchange queries, DHFL said: “The company is in receipt of a notice under section 131 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, from the Income Tax Department (Investigation Wing) on February 7, 2019, seeking information / evidence on certain aspects of the books of accounts.”

DHFL said it is in the process of collating the requisite details, and would be submitting these before the regulatory department in due course of time. 

“Kindly note that the notice does not refer to any suspicious transactions. Apart from this, as per our knowledge, there is no other price-sensitive information under Regulation 30 of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, which could have a bearing on the share price of the company,” it added.

DHFL shares closed on Monday at ₹104.95 apiece, down 3.54 per cent over the previous close on the BSE. The stock has declined almost 85 per cent since the beginning of September 2018. 

Cobrapost allegations

The housing finance company has been left reeling by allegations made by news portal Cobrapost accusing its primary promoters of siphoning off more than ₹31,000 crore of public money through secured loans and advances to shell companies, round-tripping, tax avoidance, and insider-trading.

The company’s management alleged that the news portal’s so-called ‘expose’ is based on a frivolous complaint filed by one Vikas Shekhar, who claimed to be a DHFL shareholder. They added that the said Vikas Shekhar is not a shareholder, borrower or lender to DHFL.

In their conference call with investors about a week back, DHFL’s top management, led by Kapil Wadhawan, Chairman and Managing Director, observed that over the past few years, the company has been focussing on professionalising its management to enable the growth of a retail franchise.

“The events (the ripple impact of debt defaults by IL&FS, and some of its arms on non-banking finance companies) since September 21, 2018, have accelerated the process of realigning the ownership and management to bring in a broad-based professional ownership…to enhance stakeholders’ confidence.

“We intend to take this further to pave the way for on-boarding a strategic partner. And we have already started parallel discussions to achieve this over the next 90 days. This is not an afterthought, but something which we started off post September 21, 2018,” said Wadhawan.

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