Neville Tuli, chief advisor of Osian Art Fund has been evading questions regarding payments to creditors and unit-holders despite notices from SEBI
Moneylife Digital Team
Osian’s Art Fund is back with a new website. And this time it plans to hold an auction on 15th December in Delhi. It has also announced that its dream project, Osianama, will be completed next year. These announcements have irked many investors and vendors who are still unpaid. They have demanded that the forthcoming auction be blocked unless they are paid in full.
Osian’s new website is http://auctions.osians.com, where it has been announced that chief advisor Neville Tuli has invited all for an auction preview for ‘Creative India Series I- Bengal’, which features paintings from the colonial era. The auction will be held at The Imperial, Janpath, New Delhi.
One such vendor, to whom Osian’s owes more than Rs2 million, said, “While Neville Tuli is planning to hold an auction in Delhi on 15th December, he has not paid my full dues so far for the auction of my art books held in Delhi in July 2008. He still owes me and I came to know from my lawyer that there are a dozen or so other creditors who have filed winding up petitions against him in the Bombay High Court.”
Moneylife has consistently written about the delayed payment by the Osian’s.
When Moneylife contacted Neville Tuli, chief advisor, Osian Art Fund asking him the status of payments due the above-mentioned vendor and others investors and also whether their paintings will be sold at the Delhi auction, he replied saying, “Please pick up an auction catalogue from our Mumbai office G-2B Nariman Bhavan, Nariman Point on Monday. All your questions can be answered therein.”
Regarding the vendor who is not been paid Rs2 million, he said, “The matter has been legally resolved with planned instalments. However, there was some delay from our side…”
Osianama—a grand museum of art, culture, cinema and architecture, and Mr Tuli’s dream project, will be completed in 2012. Mr Tuli had bought the plot where Mumbai famous Minerva Theatre used to stand for Osianama, but the deal got delayed when Osian’s ran into trouble with the civic authorities.
Osian Art Fund, a three-year closed-ended fund launched in 2006, ran into trouble after it declared Net Assets Value (NAV) but when investors tried to redeem the money, it was not possible.
It raised Rs102.40 crore from 656 unit-holders across 39 cities, most of them high net-worth individuals (HNIs). The scheme used to declare NAVs showing 30% returns, but when it was time for redemption, the money wasn’t forthcoming. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had also issued it a show-cause notice in November 2007 asking why it should not be regulated as a collective investment scheme; it also issued an advisory that civil and criminal proceedings can be started against art funds that were not registered with SEBI. The scheme was wound up on 10 July 2009, at which time Mr Tuli wrote to investors that redemptions would be made over the next 120 days as per the terms of the redemption guidelines. But by October, when the money wasn’t forthcoming, Moneylife was the first to report on Osian's problems (Read Osian Art Fund delays payout).