Order maintains status quo: Byju's reacts to hedge fund manager arrest

Byju's

After a US court ordered the arrest of hedge fund manager William Cameron Morton for allegedly helping Byju's conceal $533 million from its creditors, the embattled edtech said that the order maintains the status quo. It is a case of 'opportunistic foreign lenders' attempting to 'exploit an Indian startup'.

“This Order merely maintains the status quo, because we have always maintained that the said funds are safely parked in one of our subsidiaries and, as per the order, it will rightfully remain there. The court denied the primary relief requested - that a mandatory injunction be granted depositing the monies into court," Byju's said in a prepared statement on March 15th.

This comes just a day after the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware ordered the arrest of hedge fund manager William Cameron Morton for allegedly helping the Indian ed-tech startup conceal $533 million from its creditors.

In its ruling, the court also granted a preliminary injunction in favour of Byju’s Alpha Inc. against Riju Ravindran, Inspilearn LLC, and Camshaft Capital Fund LP and its affiliates.

The ruling comes after a protracted legal battle in which the court also found that Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath were working in concert with the defendants and ordered them to comply with its ruling.

Under the Order, Byju, Divya, and the defendants are prohibited from further transferring or using any of the $533 million in loan proceeds previously held by Camshaft Capital Fund LP and subsequently transferred to an unnamed, unknown offshore trust, the committee of lenders said in a statement.

"We had also maintained consistently that the lenders were aware of the $500m in BYJU’S Alpha last year. We are satisfied that this matter has been laid to rest...This case represents a concerning attempt by a group of opportunistic foreign lenders to exploit an Indian startup by levelling baseless allegations with the sole intent of extracting punitive monetary concession" Byju's statement added.