The Calcutta bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Tuesday dismissed a plea filed by Srei founder Hemant Kanoria contesting a forensic audit conducted by KPMG, which had been appointed by the lenders to Srei Infrastructure Finance (SIFL) and Srei Equipment Finance (SEFL).

The NCLT bench has also dismissed an application, moved by Kanoria, against state-owned Punjab and Sind Bank after the lender had declared the accounts of SEFL and SIFL with cumulative dues of Rs 1,234.34 crore as fraud and has reported the same to the Reserve Bank of India.

The erstwhile promoter of Srei had moved the NCLT with an appeal to set aside the audit process conducted by KPMG into the books of SEFL and SIFL in the light of the initiation of the insolvency process and refrain the lenders from publishing any audit report to the Central Repository of Information on Large Credits.

KPMG was appointed for the audit in April 2021 and was supposed to submit its report by June 2021 according to the RBI master direction on frauds of 2016-17.

In the meantime, the company was placed under the corporate insolvency resolution process in October 2021 and the resolution professional appointed by the Reserve Bank of India selected BDO India LLP to carry out the transaction audit of the corporate debtor.