India’s Hinduja Brothers Locked In Legal Battle Over Family’s $11 Billion Fortune

Members of one of India’s wealthiest families – the Hindujas – are locked in a legal battle that may determine the fate of the family’s $11 billion fortune.

At the crux of the dispute is a letter from 2014 – signed by the four Hinduja brothers – which declared that assets held by one brother will belong to all four siblings, and that each brother can appoint the others as their executors.

The four Hinduja brothers are Srichand, Gopichand, Prakash and Ashok.

However, now the eldest brother Srichand, the 84-year-old patriarch of the family, and his daughter, Vinoo, want the letter to be declared legally worthless. They have gone to court to England to sue the other three brothers.

On Tuesday, the judge in London ruled that in the summer of 2018 the three other brothers -- Gopichand, 80, Prakash, 75, and Ashok, 69, -- tried to use the 2014 letter to wrest control of the Swiss-based Hinduja Bank -- an asset that was held solely in Srichand’s name.

Srichand and Vinoo want the court to rule that the letter cannot be used as a will or a legal document and should be revoked. Srichand also said the four brothers’ assets should be separated.

In response, the three other brothers said Srichand’s and Vinoo’s actions “go against our founder’s and family’s values,” especially the idea that “everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone."

“We intend to defend the claim to uphold these dearly held family values," the three brothers added.

This other brothers have also objected to having Vinoo represent her father in the court proceedings.

They alleged that Vinoo “has her own separate financial interest in pursuing the proceedings,” and instead “an independent professional or the official solicitor” should represent Srichand.

However, the judge in the case, Justice Mrs Falk, validated Vinoo as her father’s litigation representative in court, agreeing that the elderly Srichand “does not have the capacity to conduct these proceedings due to age-related disease.”

Srichand reportedly suffers from Lewy Body disease, a form of dementia.

If Srichand’s case wins, all assets in his name would pass to his daughter and her immediate family, including the entire ownership of Hinduja Bank.

The Hinduja family runs the Hinduja Group, a massive, century-old privately held conglomerate with investments in finance, media and health care across nearly 40 countries. One of its most well known subsidiaries is Indian commercial vehicle maker Ashok Leyland. Their companies employ some 150,000 people worldwide.

However, the global pandemic has hurt Ashok Leyland as well as many other of Hinduja’s unit corporations.

Manu Balachandran wrote in Forbes that the four Hinduja brothers were long praised for their loyalty and unity – they even dressed the same and follow strict Hindu customs on food and drink.

They have jointly run the Hinduja Group since 1971 when their father Parmanand Deepchand Hinduja died.

The company originated in 1914, when 14-year-old Parmanand Hinduja (originally from Shikarpur, which is now in Pakistan) started a commodity trading business that eventually brought him to Mumbai and later to Iran.

In Iran, Paramanand’s business grew and over the decades he and his company grew close to the Persian royal family.

In 1979, after the Islamic revolution toppled the Shah of Iran, Srichand relocated the business to London. One year before that the company formed the Hinduja Bank in Switzerland.

Since their move to Europe, the Hindujas have bought a multitude of companies in India, from autos to banks to healthcare to media.

“Along the way, the fab four, as they have often been called, has courted controversies including alleged kickbacks from the sale of Bofors weapons, which they have denied and were later acquitted for,” Balachandran wrote. “It was alleged that the Hindujas were paid a commission to swing the deal in the Swedish company’s favor. They were later acquitted by the Delhi High court in 2005.”

As the Hinduja brothers attained immense wealth they also acquired pricey property in London and counted such luminaries as Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and George H.W. Bush as friends.