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Gitanjali Gems’ secretary, CFO resign
Gitanjali Gems’ chief financial officer, Chandrakant Karkare, and the company’s secretary and compliance officer, Pankhuri Warange, announced their decision in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Two top officials of Gitanjali Gems, a company allegedly linked to a loan fraud that has shaken the Indian banking sector, resigned on Monday.
While one of them said her “conscience didn’t permit” her to continue, the other said he had to take the step due to his wife’s surgery.
Gitanjali Gems’ chief financial officer, Chandrakant Karkare, and the company’s secretary and compliance officer, Pankhuri Warange, announced their decision in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The development came less than a week after the state-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) said it had detected a loan fraud, allegedly involving billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and companies linked to him.
Gitanjali Group chairman Mehul Choksi is Modi’s maternal uncle and business partner. Modi, his wife Ami, brother Neeshal and Choksi left India in the first week of January, more than a month before the fraud surfaced.
In a letter addressed to Choksi, Warange said she had certain “statutory duties and responsibilities towards the stakeholders of the company since she was in a key managerial position.
She added recent events required “the company to make disclosures under the Companies Act 2013 and the SEBI (Listing Obligation and Disclosure) Requirements, 2015”.
The absence of these disclosures, she wrote, “will have ramification not just on the company but also on the key managerial personnel”.
”There is however no consensus in my opinion on the disclosures to be made and that of the management, and in these circumstances, my conscience doesn’t permit me to continue with my position,” she wrote.
Chandrakant Karkare, the chief financial officer, said he was resigning due to a surgery his wife had to undergo. He said the recovery wasn’t up to the expected level, and that was stopping him from discharging his duty.
Both executives requested the company that their resignation be accepted immediately. At the time of filing this story, Gitanjali Gems was locked in lower circuit for the fourth straight session.
