US lenders face setback amid $1.2 billion recovery case against Byju's

An Indian court evicted US lenders from an influential creditors committee, part of a setback for the group's efforts to collect more than $1.2 billion from troubled education technology company Think & Learn Pvt, better known as Byju's.

Under a ruling from the official handling the bankruptcy suit against Byju's, lenders were denied a vote in deciding who should take control of the company pending the formulation of a plan for the debt repayment to creditors. The Lenders accused the official- Interim Resolution Professional, Pankaj Srivastava for Byju's - of "secretly plotting to reject" their claims and rigging the creditors' vote by keeping them excluded.

Before lenders' representative, Glas Trust, knew they were booted out, Srivastava called a creditors committee meeting and got himself elected as "permanent resolution professional," lenders said in an emailed statement. An email sent after business hours in India wasn't returned by Srivastava.

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“Pankaj Srivastava’s actions are unprecedented and entirely illegitimate as no interim resolution professional in the history of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of India has ever attempted to unlawfully strip financial creditors of claims of this magnitude,” the lenders said.

Lenders have for months attempted to push Byju's into an insolvency proceeding in a court in India, so far with limited success. One piece of that court battle has now landed before India's Supreme Court.

The lenders have meanwhile been on a hunt, in the US, for $533 million which Byju's founder Byju Raveendran had reportedly claimed was so well hidden, nobody would ever find it, according to court documents.

Byju's is facing a fraudulent-transfer lawsuit in a US bankruptcy court; that involves Byju's Alpha, a shell company created by Byju's to tap US capital markets. When Byju's defaulted, lenders took control of the shell company, put it under court protection, and sued to get the $533 million they claim they should receive.

In India, Byju's had a deal to end the main insolvency case against it — filed by India's governing board for cricket. The lenders asked the Supreme Court of India to block that deal, arguing money that should go to them was wrongly being used to pay off the cricket board instead. The court hasn't yet ruled on that appeal.