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JPC grills former UTI chief Subramanyam

The Joint Parliamentary Committee looking into the temporary freeze of Unit Trust of India's flagship scheme US-64 grilled the sacked UTI chairman P S Subramanyam on Friday and found his answers on certain investments 'unsatisfactory'.

Subramanyam was quizzed on UTI's continued investment in some funds despite there being a downward trend in their shares and their divestment, JPC chairman Prakash Mani Tripathi told reporters.

"Subramaniyam had no answer. Replies were not found to be satisfactory," Tripathi said adding the former UTI chairman had maintained that the finance ministry was informed quite often on a regular basis about various developments in UTI.

On the payment problems for UTI income schemes, Subramanyam said there were some problems when assured income had to be given at certain point of time.

"At that time if adequate money is not available such a crisis can happen", Subramanyam told the JPC.

On a query whether there were inconsistencies between what Subramanyam and the present UTI chairman M Damodaran deposed, Tripathi said the latter was not there in UTI when Subramanyam was the chairman of the mutual fund.

The JPC chairman, without elaborating, merely said, Damodaran did say, "he was uncomfortable about some investment decisions".

On the proposed merger of UTI Bank and Global Trust Bank, Tripathi said there appeared to be some understanding between the then GTB chairman Ramesh Gelli and Subramanyam.

"After going through (the documents) it appeared that there was more or less some contact between Gelli and Subramanyam", Tripathi said.

The JPC chairman said some 'irregularities' have been found in certain decisions for buying shares in unlisted companies. "I cannot give the details now," he said.

To a query, whether the JPC would probe possibility of insider trading by State Bank of India as it was on the board of UTI and had withdrawn Rs 1 billion from US-64 which could have been beneficial to SBI Mutual Fund, he said JPC will probe it.

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