European corporate offers $5 billion to bail out Sahara

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought a response from the beleaguered Sahara Group as to why a Receiver be not appointed to dispose of their properties to arrange Rs 36,000 crore paying its investors even as an European corporate offered to lend USD five billion to bail out the group's jailed chief Subrata Roy.

A Bench headed by Justice T S Thakur issued notice to the Saharas' on the application moved by the market regulator SEBI for appointment of Receiver as the Roy's two firms were not in a position to comply with apex court's August 31, 2012 order to refund the money to investors.

The bench, also comprising Justices A R Dave and A K Sikri sought Saharas' response within four weeks and posted the matter after six weeks while declining the plea of its counsel and senior advocate Kapil Sibal that the court should wait for sometime for the outcome on the offer made by a new foreign company, Helvetia Group.

While dealing with SEBI's plea to appoint a receiver, the bench sought the view of senior advocate and amicus curiae in the matter Shekhar Naphade, who said "we are left with no alternative".

"We have come to a situation that we have to face this. On appointing receiver, the court has to fix the terms and reference," Naphade said.

During the earlier hearing also, the bench had said it was evident that there was a difficulty for the group to sell its properties to arrange Rs 36,000 crore for making the payment in the SEBI-Sahara account since Roy has been in jail since March 4, 2014 and the sale of properties can be done by appointing a receiver.

The bench had said a retired judge of the apex court, who was appointed to oversee the action taken by SEBI against the Group, would be the chairman of the Receiver.

Today's hearing commenced with a new foreign company seeking permission to intervene in the matter saying that it was ready to lend around Euro 720 million (approximately Rs 5000 crore) to Sahara's Aamby Valley and needed to time till October 15 to complete the agreement.