NEW YORK/MUMBAI: Subrata Roy,
the boss of the Sahara conglomerate,
is in a New Delhi prison on
contempt-of-court charges and needs
to post $1.6 billion in bail to get
out. To help raise the money, Sahara
is in talks to refinance its overseas
hotels, including New York's Plaza.
The only problem: It's unclear if the
man who's orchestrating the deal, a
34-year-old former broker named
Saransh Sharma, has the money to
pull it off.
Sahara's head of corporate finance,
Sandeep Wadhwa, said Sahara's
lawyers had verified with Bank of
America that Sharma has deposited
just over $1 billion in an account at
the bank that is "earmarked for the
said transaction."
That account, however, doesn't
appear to exist. A manager at the
bank told Reuters that he didn't
write a crucial document attributed
to him: an email, sent in his name to
Sahara, which purported to verify
the account's existence. After
Reuters asked the bank to look into
the account, spokeswoman Jumana
Bauwens issued a statement saying:
"Bank of America isn't involved in
the transaction."
