Media mogul and Sun TV Network chairman Kalanithi Maran on Friday dismissed as baseless the charges levelled by his younger brother and former Union minister and DMK MP, Dayanidhi Maran in a legal notice.
With the two brothers at each other’s throat, the shares of Sun TV were down by 4%, after Dayanidhi’s legal notice to his brother.
Apparently in response to the legal notice, Sun TV Network, in a regulatory filing has defended Kalanithi Maran, saying, “The division between the promoter family, done 22 years back, was in compliance with all legal obligations… Agreements between the two brothers had been duly vetted by intermediaries concerned before the company’s public issue.”
Further, it maintained that the rift between the Maran brothers does not have any bearing on the business of the company or its day-to-day functioning.
Clarifying that the issue is ‘purely personal in nature’ and concerns a family matter of the promoter, it made it clear that the alleged matter dates back to the time when the company was a closely held private company. It was also termed as incorrect and misleading reports in the media on certain matters between the promoter and his family member.
In the notice sent through his lawyer on June 10, the junior Maran has accused Kalanithi of usurping the company and taking over its reins through fraudulent transfer of shares. The fight within the Maran family has cast its shadow in the extended first family of the DMK.
Since the transfer of shares was illegal, the entire earnings of Kalanithi through the ownership of Sun Group amounted to ‘proceeds of crime,’ he contended.
He further threatened to initiate criminal proceedings before competent authorities, including the Serious Fraud Investigation Office of the market watchdog, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) as well as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for offences ranging from cheating, conspiracy, misleading of the stock exchanges through falsification of information and money laundering.
Besides Kalanithi and his wife Kaveri as well as company secretary Ravi Ramamoorthy, he had threatened to proceed against five others closely associated with the group companies.
Dayanidhi is the younger son of Murasoli Maran, nephew of late DMK patriarch and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, who considered the senior Maran as his conscience keeper and Man Friday in the national capital. Being his grandnephew, the late DMK patriarch groomed him as the successor for Maran and made him a Union Minister in the UPA Government.
In order to prevent him from being forced to resort to such actions, Dayanidhi had demanded Kalanithi to restore the entire shareholding position of Sun TV Network Ltd., and sister firms as they stood on September 15, 2003. It was then that Kalanithi had become a shareholder by illegally allotting to himself 12 lakh equity share of Sun TV Pvt Ltd, as it was called then.
The shares of the entire group should be reinstated to the rightful owners, which included Dayalu Ammal, wife of Karunanidhi and mother of Chief Minister MK Stalin, as well the legal heirs of the late Murasoli Maran viz., Dayanidhi, his mother Mallika and sister Anbukkarasi.
For, right from the beginning, Kalanithi had remained a salaried employee of the company since the late Murasoli Maran was not interested in allotting even a single share to his elder son, he claimed.
“It is important to note till 15.09.2003, No. 1 of you (Kalanithi) did not hold even a single share in the company. Suddenly, overnight, you had become a majority shareholder with controlling interest,” he pointed out.
The 12 lakh equity shares were transferred that day with the collusion of others named in the notice without the consent of the shareholders for a paltry sum of Rs 1.2 crore (Rs 10 per share) when the actual value approximately should have been Rs 3500, he alleged. Now, both Kalanithi and Kaveri were enriching themselves by drawing huge salaries and bonuses, he charged.
Now a media empire, the Sun group had its birth initially as Sumangali Publications Pvt Ltd, incorporated in 1985. The original shareholders of Sumangali Publications were Dayalu and Mallika with Murasoli Maran joining as a shareholder in 1995, the notice said, adding that the whole process was indeed a premeditated unauthorised transaction carried out with criminal intent. Besides the immediate family, Dayalu Ammal too had been misled.
Further dropping a bombshell, Dayanidhi alleged that three days after his father had died, on November 23, 2003, Kalanithi had transferred all the shares in the names of Murasoli Maran to his mother Mallika, with the intention of transferring them to himself later on. This was carried out even without the death certificate and legal heirship certificate, which was issued only in February 2004.
Deftly drawing the Stalin family into the dispute, Dayanidhi alleged that there was a huge discrepancy in the money paid to Dayalu Ammal for acquiring a portion of shares from her while a paltry sum was paid to Mallika, for her shares. It is a fact that the DMK Headquarters Arivalayam was pledged as a guarantee for the loan availed from the Indian Bank to launch Sun TV.
Will there be a truce with the crisis in the DMK’s extended family blowing off like a storm in a teacup?