Nitin Desai death: Edelweiss denies 'wrongdoing of any nature

Neha Desai, wife of art director Nitin Desai who died by suicide on August 2, has alleged that officials from Edelweiss had mentally harassed her husband in a bid to take over ND Studio at Karjat.Edelweiss will be cooperating with the authorities in the investigation of art director Nitin Desai’s death, it said in a regulatory filing two days after the police registered a first information report (FIR) against Edelweiss group chairman Rashesh Shah and four others in the case.

Nitin Desai was the promoter of company ND's Art World, which had availed loans amounting to Rs 150 crore in 2016 and Rs 35 crore in 2018 from ECL Finance. However, ND's Art World, unfortunately, faced financial difficulties in 2019 and subsequently went into default. As a result, the loans were assigned to CFM Asset Reconstruction Company, which took legal action against the company. In an auction process, Edelweiss ARC (EARC) acquired a portfolio of assets from CFM Asset Reconstruction Company. Edelweiss Financial Services maintains that it followed the appropriate legal and regulatory procedures in handling the loans and asserts that there was no impropriety involved in the matter.

Ruling BJP's legislator Ashish Shelar mentioned about the incident in the state Assembly during its monsoon session and named Edelweiss. After that, Fadnavis made the announcement of a probe.Edelweiss in a statement reiterated it was deeply saddened by the events and would cooperate fully with the investigating authorities. "We (Edelweiss) also hope that the (investigation) process will help everybody find closure on this tragic event," it added