L&T Employee Welfare Foundation faces probe over alleged misappropriation of funds: Report

L&T is one of the leading engineering conglomerates in India. (Image: Reuters)

A probe has been initiated against L&T Employee Welfare Foundation Pvt Ltd, a wing of engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T), for the alleged misappropriation of funds, a report said on August 13.

According to the Bloomberg report, the Registrar of Companies has sent a notice to L&T Employees Welfare Foundation and LandT Welfare Co Ltd seeking their response to the allegations of cheating levelled by a group of employees.

The inspection, in this case, was ordered after an internal inquiry suggested that the allegations against the company must be probed, the report said citing sources privy to the development.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the claims made in the report. An official statement from the probing authorities was not issued.

A spokesperson of L&T told Bloomberg that the allegations have been contested and the matter is currently "sub-judice".

Also Read | Ex-employee drags L&T to NCLT; firm denies charges

Notably, a former L&T employee Uday Dixit had moved a petition in 2018 before the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), claiming that the company had deducted a sum from the salaries of its employees, including the petitioner's, between 2003 and 2008, without taking due consent.

Even though a Memorandum of Settlement regarding wage scale and other payables to workers was signed and given to the workers by the company's union, the deduction of Rs 2,000 per month from the payables to the employees was never reflected in the settlement, the petition claimed.

According to Dixit's petition, employees were verbally informed in a general meeting of the union that some amount would be deducted from their salaries and equity shares of L&T for the deducted amount would be issued to them. However, employees were given shares of the Employee Welfare Pvt Ltd company, the petitioner added.

Denying the allegations, an L&T spokesperson had then stated, "The petitioner has been filing frivolous and baseless cases against L&T and its management in the past few years. The courts have already dismissed five of these cases including the SLP in the Honourable Supreme Court of India in September 2013 and the writ petition in the Honourable High Court, Mumbai in March 2018."

With PTI inputs