The Abu Dhabi Global Market Courts have found that Dr Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, founder of NMC Health, and Prasanth Manghat, the company’s former chief executive, were both knowingly party to a fraud against the NMC Group that the court assessed caused losses beginning at a starting point of US$5,397 million.
Justice Sir Andrew Smith issued the judgment on November 5, 2026, following hearings that ran from March 23 to July 3 2026. The case was brought by NMC Healthcare Limited and its joint administrators, with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank running a parallel action against Manghat alone.
The court found the fraud operated across two tracks throughout the period from April 2, 2012 to April 9, 2020. The first was the direct misappropriation of company funds: transfers to bank accounts in Shetty’s name totalled AED 4,183 million gross during the period, with a net value after counter-payments of approximately AED 2.6 billion.
Indirect payments channelled through affiliated entities added at least AED 426.4 million. Payments to Manghat personally totalled at least AED 9.3 million in direct transfers, with a further AED 54,836,500 routed through a separate entity.
The second track was the systematic misrepresentation of NMC’s finances. By mid-2019, unreported debt stood at AED 15,025.4 million against reported debt of AED 7,695.7 million, giving a combined total of AED 22,721.1 million.
The court found NMC Healthcare and its related companies were balance-sheet insolvent continuously from December 31, 2013. The undisclosed liabilities were concealed from auditor Ernst and Young through manipulated ledger accounts and, from around mid-2019, through the maintenance of two sets of books.
A separate scheme involved third parties issuing invoices for goods and services never supplied. Financial institutions would pay those invoices; the recipients would remit the funds back to the NMC Group; the group would then repay the obligation. The scheme generated AED 0.2 billion in 2012, rising to AED 10.1 billion by 2019.
A sequence of WhatsApp messages played a central role in the judgment. In March 2019, as auditors pressed for confirmation of bank balances that would have revealed the hidden debt, Manghat was found to have assisted in forging correspondence purportedly from Bank of Baroda and in impersonating bank officials on a fabricated telephone call with EY.
When the 2018 financial statements were finally approved late on March 6, 2019, Manghat wrote on a group WhatsApp chat: “God is great” and “that power helped us do this.” Shetty was found to have known of the concealment effort and to have offered a dishonest account of the accounts in question at an Audit Committee meeting that same day.
When cross-examined on his knowledge of the payments made for Shetty’s benefit, Manghat changed his evidence mid-hearing. “If you ask me like a yes or no, Your Honour, yes, I knew,” he told the court. “But some of them, I didn’t know.”
Shetty’s personal acquisitions funded with company money included a stake in Travelex, royal catering business RCS, Dubai Hills villas, and Wyoming oil field interests. The court rejected his claim not to know of the British Virgin Islands vehicle used to hold several of those investments, noting he had signed and initialled each page of a 47-page sale agreement naming that entity as purchaser. In cross-examination, Shetty accepted he had a “rough idea” of the true scale of NMC’s debts.
ADCB’s claim against Manghat was upheld in full. The bank’s damages were assessed at approximately US$1,022,293,322 on its core loan facilities, with an additional loss of profit figure of US$168,988,980, subject to credits totalling around US$29.9 million from various recoveries. The court found Manghat liable under UAE Civil Code provisions on harmful acts and deception, and as a de facto and later formally appointed manager of NMC Healthcare.
On the insolvency claims, the court declared both Shetty and Manghat liable to make contributions to NMC Healthcare’s assets on grounds of fraudulent trading under the ADGM Insolvency Regulations 2022. The starting point for contributions was set at the agreed increased net deficiency figure of US$5,397 million. The court noted that Shetty himself had accepted in a submission dated 13 May 2026 that if he were found to be a principal who instigated the fraud and the group became insolvent as a result, “it would be unrealistic to resist an order for the entire amount of the insolvency.”
A further hearing will be scheduled to settle final orders, statutory interest, costs, and several outstanding reserved matters. Claims against Bank of Baroda were discontinued after a settlement was reached during the trial.
