(a) whether any Central Coordination and Monitoring Committee has
been constituted to enquire against the issues related to vanishing
companies and their promoters and also to take stock of follow up action
against them;
(b) if so, the total number of such companies and their promoters
against whom action has been taken till date; and
(c) the amount of money realized till date from them?
THE MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF CORPORATE AFFAIRS (SHRI R.P.N. SINGH)
(a) to (c) The term ‘Vanishing Companies’ is applied both to the Companies
which cease to file their statements of return or where, after raising capital,
the whereabouts of their Registered Office or their Directors are not known.
A Central Coordination and Monitoring Committee was constituted in 1999 to
identify such companies and recommend further action against them. Initially,
238 such companies were identified, out of which 119 companies subsequently
started filing their returns with the Registrars of Companies [RoCs] concerned and
were, therefore, removed from the list of Vanishing Companies. Another 32 of such
companies have gone into liquidation. Currently there are 87 companies that are
falling in the list of Vanishing Companies.
Prosecutions in respect of 86 companies have so far been filed under
various Sections of the Companies Act for inducing investment of money
by misrepresentation of facts, etc. Similarly, 82 FIRs have been filed
with police in respect of certain Companies and their Directors whose
whereabouts could not be traced despite efforts. It is, however, not possible
to exactly quantify the amounts realised as the process of liquidation is still
going on in large number of cases.