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69 NRIs go to Mauritius Supreme Court alleging wrong real estate investments in India
 
A group of 69 non-resident Indian investors have moved the Supreme Court of Mauritius seeking $103 million (Rs. 618 crore) in damages from the ICICI group for a fund that under-performed

The petitioners allege that the Dynamic India Fund III invested in real estate projects in India that failed miserably, though the promoters, ICICI Venture and ICICI Bank, made tall promises while mobilising funds. Dismissing the claims as baseless, ICICI Venture has said it will contest the charges legally.

“A plaint with summons was lodged before the Supreme Court of Mauritius by a group of NRI and foreign investors against [DIF III] … ICICI Bank and the Western India Trustee And Executor Co. Ltd.,” Banymandhup Boolell Chambers, the legal firm handling the case for the petitioners, said in a press statement.

The petition says the ICICI firms invested in 13 projects, of which three in Hyderabad and two in Mumbai consumed 60 per cent of the corpus despite the original plan of spreading the investments to projects in cities across India.

“Even after completion of nine years of the investments, except for one, none of these [projects] was completed as stated in their [ICICI firms] Report of March 2014,” the legal firm said.
Township in Chennai
Work on a township project in Chennai, in which the fund invested, has not even commenced after nine years because of serious infrastructure problems, it added. Two or three projects are in dire financial liquidity problems. The fund has exited from only one project in Pune after eight years, that too after it considerably underperformed, the statement said.

“Thus, it is a classic case of total neglect of due diligence, research of suitability taking into account of exit term, outrageous underestimation of cost and completion, alleged negligence and overt manipulation of the finances for escalating costs and serious blunders in judgment of selection of projects,” their statement said.

The investors have urged the court to order the respondents to pay them jointly $103 million together with interest.