‘Not my signature’: Embattled tycoon BR Shetty vows to appeal $106 mn Dubai court award to ICICI Bank

Mumbai: Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, the embattled Indian entrepreneur who founded the UAE’s largest private healthcare chain, said he was “shocked” after a Dubai court ordered him to pay nearly ₹1,000 crore to ICICI Bank, and vowed to appeal the decision.

The Dubai International Financial Centre Court last Monday ordered Shetty to pay ICICI Bank $106 million (about ₹920 crore) in lieu of his personal guarantees for loans taken by his now-bankrupt company.

“I am definitely filing an appeal against this judgement, and I’m very confident that this judgement will be overturned by the appeal court. Ultimately truth will prevail, and I will get justice,” Shetty told Mint.

ICICI Bank did not respond to emails sent on Friday evening for comment.

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The Indian private bank had raised claims of more than $125 million against Shetty after two companies related to him—NMC Healthcare and Modular Concepts—defaulted on loans for which the 82-year-old had allegedly given his personal guarantee.

NMC Healthcare had signed three loan facilities of $105 million cumulatively with the bank between 2012 and 2019. Modular Concepts had another loan facility of $30 million signed in June 2019. The two companies are now insolvent.

While ICICI Bank’s claims for the loans to NMC Healthcare were successful, the Dubai court dismissed claims made for loans to Modular Concepts, according to the judgement dated 17 February, which Mint has reviewed.

‘Not my signature’

Shetty has denied providing any personal guaranty and has said that his signature on the loan documents was forged. Hence, much of the focus of the trial was on the expert evidence given by handwriting experts.

While Shetty did not dispute that the loans were indeed given by ICICI Bank to NMC Healthcare, he has denied any relationship with Modular Concepts.

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“Looks like my signature, but maybe it’s a fake. Maybe signature expert can check, the signature expert [sic.]. I’m sure there’s a fraud in this,” Shetty was quoted as saying in the judgement.

“Looks like, yes, looks like it, but that is not my signature. My people, my people did it, or other people. I don’t know who did it,” he said.

However, both the handwriting experts—one appointed by ICICI Bank and one by Shetty’s own counsel—confirmed to the court that it was his signature on the document.

A dramatic rise and fall

The story of Shetty’s rise and fall have been equally dramatic. Born in Udupi, Shetty migrated to the UAE in the 1970s with little to his name. He went on to create a business empire in the Middle East that made him billions and garnered cult-like following in India. In 2005, he was the recipient of the Abu Dhabi Award, the highest civilian honour in the UAE. In 2012, NMC Healthcare listed on the London Stock Exchange, raising £117 million. In 2018, he signed The Giving Pledge, the campaign started by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, to encourage billionaires to give away most of their wealth to philanthropic causes.

However, Shetty’s business started unravelling after a 2019 report from American short seller Muddy Waters questioned the company’s financials, calling its profitability to be “too good to be true.”

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Muddy Waters’ attention was first drawn to NMC Healthcare through sheer coincidence. The short seller had made a cryptic post on Twitter in August 2019 about an accounting fraud at an unnamed London-listed firm. While the tweet was not about NMC Healthcare, shares of the company fell following this tweet, prompting Muddy Waters to look into it, the firm’s founder Carson Block told Economic Times Magazine in 2020.

Soon, serious discrepancies came to light as investors and regulators started scrutinizing the financials of the firm. NMC Healthcare went into insolvency in 2020 in the UK, where it was listed. Shetty left the UAE for India.