The board of directors for Zee Entertainment strongly condemned the allegation made against former non-executive directors by corporate governance bodies, InGovern and Investor Advisory Services (IiAS).

According to the press statement by the Zee Board of Directors, the interests of the shareholders have always been paramount to the company under the mentorship of Manish Chokhani and Ashok Kurien along with all the members of the board. “Speculations disparaging the contribution of the said Non-Executive Directors of the company are baseless and arise out of inadequate understanding of the industry. Decisions taken by Committee Members and the Board of Directors of the company are being wrongly attributed to individual directors without any basis,” the statement added.

Since last week Chokhani and Kurien have been under fire, with a litany of allegations against them. They were accused of of misgovernance, non accountability for losses, wrongful high compensation of Zee MD Punit Goenka as well as failure to deal with governance concerns.

Call to remove MD

Goenka came under fire as well, ahead of the September 14 AGM, where key shareholders such as Invesco Developing Markets Fund and OFI Global China Fund LLC asked for Goenka’s removal from the board in an Extraordinary General Meeting which will be held on a later date.

Invesco and OFI also asked for the removal of Chokhani and Kurien from the board, although both had resigned by then citing personal reasons.

The press statement said the board maintains that under their collective direction, the company has consistently undertaken several initiatives to bring in more transparency to the shareholders.

The statement from Zee, however, did not address the specific allegations made by the proxy advisory firms.

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