Mumbai:
The 300-crore empire co-founded by BJP president Nitin Gadkari is being investigated by the government to determine who exactly funds it, and how.
Purti Power and Sugar Limited was set up a decade ago by Mr Gadkari. It has a matrix of 18 firms as its investors. As NDTV has been reporting, many of those firms share addresses which appear to exist only on paper. Mr Gadkari has denied any financial malpractices or ghost investors. He said, he "approached many people from society - industrialists, traders, businessmen, investors."
Mr Gadkari quit as chairman of Purti last year. He now owns just 200 shares in the company.
One of the companies that bought into Purti in 2007 was Regency Equifin Private Limited - it picked up shares worth 4.3 crores.
But just a year later, the same company began borrowing from Mr Gadkari, and soon after, from Purti. In 2008-09, Regency borrowed an unsecured loan of 26 lakhs from Mr Gadkari. The next year, the company's balance sheet shows that 10 lakhs had been repaid to Mr Gadkari. So in 2011, the firm owed the BJP president 16 lakhs.
Regency also borrowed money from Purti, according to its records. In 2010, Mr Gadkari's firm loaned this investor 1.05 crores; a year later, in 2011, Regency had returned just 10 lakhs to Purti.
What the balancesheets of Regency reveal is that Mr Gadkari was lending money to a company that had invested in his firm - a move that could trigger an alert of round-tripping of money, as well as a shell company.
Its records show that Regency has two directors - its ownership is not clear. The official address for one of its former directors, Kawdu Zade, is Mr Gadkari's home in Nagpur.
The firm's registered address is shared with three other investor firms in Purti: 39, Shivkarpa Building, Hajibapu Road, Malad East, Mumbai.
A visit to the location shows a man named Vijaylak Roonta and his family have been residing here for years. They say they have never heard of the companies they supposedly house.