Mumbai: A yet another multi-crore fraud case has been filed against travel company Cox & Kings Ltd and its eight board members. On July 4, the Andheri police registered an offence under cheating and forgery amounting to Rs 105.93 crore following a complaint by SBI Cards and Payment Services, a non-banking financial company (NBFC), to the Economic Offences Wing. The FIR said that Cox & Kings has cheated 21 banks and NBFCs in the past.
SBI Cards has alleged that the accused took credit facilities on forged papers, which falsely showed the firm as profitable, and later failed to pay EMIs. As per the complainant, the board members and officers allegedly prepared fake balance sheets and obtained seven corporate cards.
The accused have been identified as directors Ajay Kerkar, Urshila Kerkar, Anthony Good, Pessy Patel and Mahalinga Narayan, and chief financial officer Anil Khandelwal and internal auditor Naresh Jain.
According to the FIR, Cox & Kings had been conducting transactions with SBI Cards and Payment Services since April 2013. It applied for corporate cards and submitted applications along with supporting documents signed by the accused. After examining the documents, the NBFC issued seven cards between May 2013 and November 2018. Of these, five cards were used in Maharashtra and one each in Delhi and Karnataka.
In the same period, the company recorded a turnover of Rs1,541 crore using corporate cards and paid Rs1,467 crore to SBI Cards, as per the FIR. The firm then applied for an increased credit limit, which was extended to Rs90 crore, alleged SBI Cards, adding that the Cox & Kings failed to pay taxes in June 2019 and shortly it declared bankruptcy.
In October 2019, SBI Cards terminated the corporate card services, after finding that the company had allegedly fake documents to avail the credit. Subsequently, a complaint was filed by the SBI Cards' senior manager of the legal department.
Cox & Kings and its board members have been booked under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
P.S. - Cox & Kings was acquired by Wilson and Hughes via NCLT in 2024 and the new management has no relation with the accused former board members mentioned in the case.
