Devil in Pinstripes (27 page)

Manish probed further and asked a number of uncomfortable questions. The discussion with Nirmal lasted another forty-five minutes. It was planned to be a ten minute discussion. At the end of the heated conversation, Manish looked a shocked man. His facial expression, which till now had oozed confidence, had undergone a hundred and eighty degree change. Worried, he seemed to be torn between what was the right thing to do and what was the good thing to do. He couldn’t believe what Nirmal had told him.

‘OKAY. Thanks. You can go now. You will hear from me soon,’ was his parting remark to Nirmal. He called Raman Bhaskar and was closeted in the room with him for over thirty minutes. Victor looked on from outside the glass walls of the conference room. There was an animated discussion going on inside. He couldn’t figure out what the discussion was about.

By the time the discussion ended, it was already three in the afternoon.

‘Do you need anything else Manish?’ Victor asked him.

‘No Victor. I am fine. In fact I am through with what I wanted to do. I am only expected at the airport by 6.45. I have some time to kill. What do you recommend I do?’

Victor just looked on blankly, waiting for some instructions from Manish.

‘Tell me. Are you guys still in touch with Jacqueline?’ Manish asked him.

‘Once in a while. Not much after she left us.’

‘Is she still in Hyderabad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she these days?’

‘Vodafone. She quit us and joined Vodafone.’

‘Why?’

‘You were not there Manish. There was no motivation for her to stay!’ Victor winked at Manish and broke into a smile.

‘Very funny.’ Manish was not amused at this tongue in cheek remark from Victor. But the fact was that he had the hots for Jacqueline and it was known to almost everyone.

‘Do you have her phone number?’

‘Let me see.’ He searched through the phone book on his cell phone. ‘Found it. I am SMSing it to you.’

Jacqueline was the earlier collections head for Hyderabad for NFS. At one point in time she had worked with Manish, when he was in India, in his central team in Mumbai. Her marriage to a Hyderabad-based businessman had brought her to the city of pearls. A few months back she had quit NFS and moved on. Had Manish been in India at that time, he would have surely held her back. Unfortunately, he was miles away in Singapore. Now, since Manish had some time, he wanted to catch up with her. Wasn’t she one of his favourites?

He left the office at four. More than the coffee, thoughts of Jacqueline had successfully stopped all his sleep cells from working. The excitement was showing on his face and in his mannerisms. Wasn’t he glad that he was alone in the car? The meeting with Jacqueline had been fixed for 4.30 p.m. at her office. The Vodafone office, where Jacqueline worked as head of customer service, was only a ten-minute drive from NFS and Manish was standing before Jacqueline’s office fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Jacqueline was extremely pleased to meet him. The last time the two had met was over two years ago, and she was very nostalgic about it. When he was her supervisor, she had simply adored him.

The meeting was brief, lasted about fifteen–twenty minutes. There was a small interruption wherein Jacqueline had disappeared back to her workstation only to resurface within five minutes with a bunch of papers, which she handed to Manish. A quick cup of coffee, and he was on his way to the airport. His feelings were a mix of elation at having cracked the case and depression at having unearthed something sinister. He now had enough dope to keep Aditya occupied throughout the plane journey.

Aditya was already waiting inside the airport lounge when Manish joined him. As luck would have it, their flight was delayed by thirty minutes and they were stuck in the lounge. Manish looked tired and had a five O’clock shadow. He was patiently waiting for Aditya to ask him abut the details of his investigation. After an excruciating wait of ten minutes when Aditya didn’t ask him anything, Manish couldn’t resist.

‘Do you want me to tell you all that I have found out?’

‘Go. Get yourself a sandwich. Eat in peace. Let’s get on to the flight. You will then have an hour and thirty minutes of uninterrupted time from me.’ Manish didn’t have a choice but wait till they boarded.

‘How are you finding Singapore?’ Time for some casual conversation as they had another forty-five minutes to go for boarding to be announced.

‘It is okay Aditya.’

‘You don’t seem to be too excited.’

‘India is India Aditya. No other country can be as good. Career is great, but I miss my family and friends. Seema is finding it difficult to adjust there.’

‘I can understand. Natasha too found it very difficult to adjust in London when we went overseas for our first stint. She missed her parents, her friends, etc. She nagged me to death to come back to India.’

‘Seema does the same.’

‘So does this mean that you want to come back?’

‘If there is an opportunity, then definitely yes.’

‘Opportunities will come my friend. Soon. Have some patience and keep faith.’ Aditya never drew a line without blurring it. Manish smiled. He understood bits and pieces of what Aditya was hinting at, but he could not be too blatant about his aspirations with Aditya. He kept his calm and poise. As long as Aditya understood his aspirations and desire to come back, it was fine with him. He knew Aditya would do something for him.

Aditya had asked his secretary to tele-checkin both of them and she had dutifully put them on seats next to each other. Finally, they boarded and the flight took off. They were both in business class so there was no chance of a third individual next to them overhearing their conversation.

‘Shoot,’ said Aditya the moment the flight had taken off. Manish was waiting for this moment. He turned towards Aditya and started speaking.

‘Aditya, let me start from the beginning. I reached office this morning and met the key guys involved. I met Victor, who gave me all the documents for this case. He showed me the application form, the verification reports, the fraud check reports, the underwriting logic and also shared with me the details of the collection activity carried out in Tulsiram’s case. I reviewed the receipt books, checked the receipt book audits and also met with the collection agent who was following up with Tulsiram. An agent called Sunder. I also met with Nirmal, the location head, who has done the recent receipt book audits.’

‘Okay. What is the outcome?’

‘Let me take you through my deductions of each individual activity. I don’t know why, but I feel that you already know the outcome. Your hypothesis in the beginning is probably correct. But if you permit, I would still go step-by-step and walk you through what I found out.’

‘OKAY. I am all ears. But make sure you finish this before we land in Mumbai . . . and please ensure I don’t sleep off.’

‘Ha ha! No Aditya. Coming back to the issue, the documents based on which the loans were given to Tulsiram, were all clean. No issues there. It fitted into our loan policy and the person who approved the loan was well within his rights and there was no mistake there. Anyone else would have done the same thing.’

‘OKAY, so nothing wrong in that part of the story.’

‘No Aditya.’

‘Go ahead.’

I then asked for the receipt book audit reports, collection receipts for November and also the last three receipts of Tulsiram, since he had paid in cash.’

‘Hmm . . .’

‘This is where the problem started. There were lots of errors in the receipt books of November. However, the receipt book audit report stated that everything was in order. It did not pick up even five percent of the errors which were there – some of them were blatant errors, which had been ignored.’

‘What kind of errors?’

‘The receipts were incomplete, the amount details were not clear in many and in many cases the customer acknowledgement was missing. And the worrying bit is that in some cases, the receipts were blank. In some, the customer copy of the receipts were also in the receipt books, suggesting that maybe the customer was not even given a copy of the receipt. Forget that, it could even be that the customer never made the payment.’

‘Any trends?’

‘Almost thirty-five percent of the payments received in the last three days of the month did not have the customer signature. A number of payment receipts corresponding to the payment received in the last two days of the month were blank. This is what the sample check threw up. Not many of them reported in the receipt book audit.’

‘What does this mean in your interpretation?’ Aditya was like one of those people who would love to read the last few pages of a thrilling suspense even before reaching the middle of the book.

‘I will come to that Aditya. Just give me a minute. Let me complete the story.’

‘Okay. Go ahead.’

‘November was the worst. A cursory check of the payment made file for November showed me that of the payments received on 30th November, four payments were made by cheque from the same bank account. An account which belonged to neither of the four customers. Four different customers with different names, living in four different corners of town cannot have the same bank account number. Clearly someone is paying for these customers.’

‘And that someone is?’

‘Us.’

‘What? Are you sure?’

‘Yes Aditya. I am reasonably sure of this. All these cheques came from the account of Vasudev Reddy.’

‘So! How can that be US?’

‘Vasudev Reddy is not a customer. He is the proprietor of Shobha Debt Recovery Services, our collection agency in Hyderabad. Why would a collection agency pay customers overdue instalments from its own bank account?’

‘Understood.’ This was meant to be more of an acknowledgement of the fact that he was listening to.

‘I pulled out and reviewed the last three months’ bills pertaining to Shoba Debt Recovery Services. In every month there has been a huge payment of approx Rs 40,000 made to this agency towards “Professional Services rendered”. This is over and above the regular billing to this agency which is as per the approved collection agency payout grid.’

‘The “Professional Services Rendered” is only a façade . . . to camouflage the excess payment made to the agency.’ Aditya’s eyes were closed, but he was listening.

‘You are bang on Aditya. My guess is that this money is being used by the agency to pay the instalments of the customers who are overdue. When I quizzed Raman Bhaskar about this, he had no clue. He went all over the place without giving me a concrete answer on what this amount pertained to.’

‘He is the one doing it . . . the bastard.’ Aditya was fuming by now.

‘Probably Aditya. Let me explain how this works. Raman Bhaskar has a target to achieve. He is tasked with collecting the dues from a certain percentage of customers who are delinquent. As long as he meets his targets, the delinquencies will be under control and no one questions anything. Everyone is happy.’

‘I know.’

‘The problem starts when he is not able to collect from delinquent customers. The reasons could be many. Customers may not be able to pay or maybe customers have taken the money and run away, something we call as “Skip” customers. This starts impacting the portfolio performance. We start writing off these loans and the losses mount. The first to get impacted is the collections manager on site. He misses his targets and hence his incentives tank. As the problem grows, it starts impacting the business guys as well. They are accountable for profitability of the portfolio. Lack of collections and higher delinquencies would even impact Gowri.’

‘Stop lecturing Manish.’

‘Sorry Aditya. I got carried away. You know how passionately I feel about these things. Anyway, the collections guys have found an innovative solution for this. Pay the collection agencies a little bit more than what they should be contractually paid. For instance in the case of Shobha, we needed to pay only Rs 1,32,000 as a payout for the work done by them in September. We paid them 1,72,000. Vasudev Reddy used the balance 40,000 to pay the instalments for customers who he could not collect from. Those customers go out of the delinquent list and hence the portfolio looks good and everyone from the collection agent to Gowri is safe. The problem gets camouflaged. And the targets for the collections guys are met and they make their incentives.’

Aditya was listening to Manish intently. He knew how this worked. However, for once he did not want to cut Manish’s flow of thoughts.

‘It works brilliantly Aditya. If a customer, who has a loan of Rs 1 Lakh for which he pays an instalment of Rs 2000, defaults on six instalments, NFS would write off the entire loan. Assuming in November a customer had six instalments overdue and doesn’t pay before 30 November, then on 1 December NFS would write off the entire loan amount as a loss in their books, i.e. Rs 1 Lakh as a loss.

‘Instead, if someone, in this case – the collection agency, pays one instalment before 30 November, then on 1 December, the customer will only have five instalments due. Hence the loan doesn’t get written off. A loss of 1 lakh is saved. At what cost?’

‘Only Rs 2000,’ Aditya impulsively reacted.

‘Right Aditya. The collections managers and the agency work hand-in-glove. The agency will normally not pay from their pocket and would bill NFS these monies . . . As Shoba Debt Recovery Services has done through the “Professional Services Rendered” bill. The collections managers clear these expenses, which are invariably multiple small bills and hence do not come under the scanner of anyone checking them. Our collections expenses go up but we save on write-offs. With 40,000 payout to Shobha Debt Collectors, they could have paid back instalments for over 20 lakh worth of customers. NFS incurred an illegitimate expense of 40,000 and in the process probably saved a write off of 20 lakh.’