Billions on the Brochure, Blanks in the Record: The Unanswered Questions Around Krishan Rattan and Ankiti Bose

Zilingo: the report that ended a career and has never been shown

Ankiti Bose was dismissed for cause from a company valued at close to US$1 billion, and four years later nobody outside its boardroom has seen the evidence. That is the central failure of the Zilingo affair, and it belongs to everyone involved.

The sequence is not in dispute. Zilingo suspended its co-founder and chief executive on 31 March 2022, while it was trying to raise US$150 to 200 million with Goldman Sachs. Lenders then recalled their entire loan. On 20 May 2022 the board terminated her employment with cause after a forensic investigation into complaints of serious financial irregularities, and reserved the right to sue.

It never did. The company went into liquidation in January 2023, its technology assets sold to Buyogo AG of Switzerland. In April 2023 investor Burda Principal Investments said that “significant irregularities in reporting to investors” led to the failure, that Kroll’s work was complete, and that investors were still weighing legal action.

That was three and a half years ago. No suit by Zilingo, its liquidators or its investors against Bose has surfaced since. No regulator in Singapore has announced action. The Kroll report stays locked away.

The silence cuts both ways, and both are damning for the system. If the report supports what the board said, investors who put US$308 million into the company have chosen not to test it in court. If it does not, a founder was publicly branded on the strength of a document she says she was never shown. Bose said at the time that she was fired for “insubordination” and had seen neither the Kroll nor the Deloitte findings.

Bose is entitled to say no court has found against her. She is not entitled to have the question treated as closed. A termination for cause after a forensic probe is a fact. So is the absence of any proceeding built on it. Until the report is published or tested, any biography that passes over how Zilingo ended leaves out the part readers most need.

Voltaire: a US$100 million claim that ended in a private agreement

Krishan Rattan spent years as the second of fourteen defendants in a London civil fraud claim, and left it two months before trial on terms nobody has disclosed. “No adverse finding” is accurate. It is also the minimum any discontinued claim produces.

The case is Voltaire Capital Holdings Ltd and others v Eric Watson and others, claim CL-2022-000699 in the Commercial Court. The court’s own listing names Eric Watson as first defendant and Krishan Rattan as second. The claimants are investment vehicles of the Gemini group, associated with Egypt’s Sawiris family.

Their pleaded case, as summarised in an April 2026 judgment and reported from it, was that Gemini put roughly US$132 million into the Voltaire foreign-exchange business between 2014 and 2019 and lost about US$101 million. They alleged that they believed Rattan controlled a legitimate business, when it was in fact largely controlled by Watson. The causes of action included fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty and conspiracy.

Those are allegations. They were never tried against Rattan, and he defended the claim. One thing a court did decide concerns him directly. In July 2025 the Commercial Court ordered the second defendant to pay £63,267 in costs after a disclosure-guidance application he brought turned into a heavily contested hearing. That is a procedural costs order, not a finding on the merits.

The first defendant’s history is part of the context the claimants relied on. Eric Watson was found by the English High Court in 2018, in an unrelated case, to have obtained an investment by deceit, and was later jailed for four months for contempt. Rattan was not a party to that case and nothing in it concerns him. What role Watson actually played at Voltaire, and what Rattan knew of it, is exactly what the trial would have examined.

Then came the exit. Terra-Invest announced that the claimants had discontinued their claims against Rattan and that a Notice of Discontinuance was filed on 6 August 2026. The trial was listed to begin on 12 October 2026.

A man who says he did nothing wrong was weeks away from a ten-week trial that could have said so in a public judgment. He took a private agreement instead. That is his right, and litigants settle for many sound reasons. But the unanswered questions are his to answer:

• Did any money change hands, and in which direction?
• Who bears the costs of four years of litigation?
• Did the agreement include any undertaking, cooperation or confidentiality term?

A founder who invites the public to trust him with capital, and who cites the discontinuance as vindication, should publish the terms. Vindication that depends on a sealed agreement is an assertion.

DLI: six years on a board, then the tribunal

Rattan sat on the board of Distribution Logistics Infrastructure Pvt Ltd through its restructuring, default and loan recall, and resigned eleven months before it was admitted to insolvency. The admission order names no director, and none of the debt is his. The question is what the board did while public-sector banks’ money went bad.

The dates come from the tribunal record and from Terra-Invest’s own statement. Company records, as reported, show Rattan appointed on 19 April 2019. Terra-Invest says he resigned with effect from 20 June 2025. In between:

Bank of India’s petition claimed a default of ₹77.30 crore. The tribunal admitted it after finding that a one-time settlement had been proposed, extended and never implemented. Insolvency filings, as reported, put provisionally admitted secured claims at ₹993.26 crore across six lenders, led by Bank of Baroda at ₹408.09 crore. Almost all of that is owed to public-sector banks.

DLI’s parent tells the same story at larger scale. Infrastructure India plc, the AIM-listed fund that owned it, reported net liabilities of £217.4 million at 30 September 2023. Its main facility was a US$121.5 million term loan at 15%, secured on the shares of DLI’s parent. In June 2024 shareholders voted down the board’s own proposals to wind up and delist.

A director is not a guarantor, and resignation before insolvency is not an offence. But a seat on a board is a duty, not a line on a biography. For six years Rattan held one at a company that restructured, defaulted, turned non-performing, and had its loans recalled. He owes lenders and the public a plain account:

• What did the board know about the parent’s 15% debt and its effect on DLI?
• Were any of the company’s unfunded settlement proposals made while he was a director?
• Why did he leave in June 2025, and what did he tell the board when he did?

The resolution professional’s transaction audit is the place where director-level conduct would surface. It should be finished and published without delay.

Terra-Invest: big numbers, thin support

The figures Terra-Invest and Mount Row Partners publish about themselves trace back to their own press material, and this research found no audit, filing or regulator entry behind them. Self-description is not evidence, however many outlets reprint it.

The deadline on the last claim has passed. It is October 2026. A firm that promised US$2.5 billion by 2025 has had ample time to say what it reached, and to show its working.

One detail in the launch record is worth noticing. In February 2024, press material described Terra Invest as the venture-builder arm of Rattan’s Mount Row, and did not mention Bose. Four months later the launch was presented with Bose, Rattan and former US ambassador Kirk Wagar as founding partners. Mount Row is also the announced lead investor in KairosWealth, a company Rattan chairs. An investor is entitled to ask how much of this structure is arm’s-length capital and how much is one group describing itself.

Several further points rest on the earlier Inventiva audit and were not re-verified for this article. That audit reported that the Singapore registry lists Mount Row Partners Pte Ltd as a management consultancy with share capital of SGD 100, and that it found no fund-management licence while noting it could not query the regulators’ registers. Those points should be checked against ACRA, MAS and FCA records before they are relied on.

None of this proves a false statement. It shows that the claims are unsupported in public, which is a different problem and an easy one to cure. Terra-Invest can publish audited accounts, name its regulator and licence number, and identify the transactions behind US$12 billion. Until it does, the numbers are marketing.

The courtroom strategy: fast against critics, slow on the substance

Both founders have moved quickly in court against people who write about them, while the files that could settle the underlying questions sit unresolved. Defamation suits decide what may be said. They do not decide what happened.

Bose’s record as a plaintiff is long. In 2023 she sued investor Mahesh Murthy in the Bombay High Court for ₹820 crore, about US$100 million, over a magazine column, and obtained an injunction. She sued an Inc42 journalist and an NDTV company; a single judge declined jurisdiction in late 2023. In 2026 she and Rattan each sued Nitin Naresh and the Inventiva website in Delhi.

The Delhi High Court has granted both of them interim relief. An August 2026 order in Bose’s suit restrains further articles that would hamper her exercise of legal rights. A 14 September 2026 order in Rattan’s suit bars further articles containing defamatory imputations against him, while stating that the defendants may continue their fact-finding. Terra-Invest says civil and criminal complaints are also being pursued in India and the UAE.

They are entitled to every one of those remedies. A person wrongly accused has the right to sue, and courts have found a prima facie case in their favour. Some earlier coverage of them went further than the record allowed, and that deserves to be said plainly.

But look at the asymmetry. An interim injunction against a publisher took weeks. The Zilingo liquidation has run since early 2023 without a published account of what went wrong. The Kroll report is four years old and unseen. The Voltaire terms are private. A ₹820 crore claim for damage to reputation sits beside a forensic report that its holders will not release and that Bose says she has never seen.

Reputation is not restored by silencing questions. It is restored by answering them. Much of the route to ending this coverage is in the founders’ own hands. Bose can demand publicly that the Kroll report be released. Rattan can publish the Voltaire terms. Terra-Invest can publish its accounts.

What the subjects say

Both founders deny wrongdoing, and their positions are on the record.

Ankiti Bose has said since 2022 that she was dismissed for insubordination, that she was never shown the Kroll or Deloitte findings, and that the process was a witch-hunt shaped by conflicts of interest. She has said every payment Zilingo made was properly documented. Her case in the Delhi High Court is that no investigation report was furnished to her and no court has found her guilty of anything.

Krishan Rattan, through Terra-Invest, says the Voltaire claims against him were discontinued by agreement with the claimants and without any finding of fraud, dishonesty or wrongdoing. On DLI, Terra-Invest says he resigned on 19 June 2025, effective the next day, almost eleven months before insolvency began. Terra-Invest describes the coverage of both founders as inaccurate and incomplete and says it is pursuing legal action over it.

Neither was asked for fresh comment for this article. Both should be given the questions above and a fair period to answer before publication, and their replies should be printed in full.

What must happen now

A handful of open files could settle these questions, and every one of them has been open too long. Slow process is not neutral. It leaves two people under permanent suspicion and leaves lenders, investors and employees without answers.

1. Zilingo’s liquidators in Singapore should report publicly on the causes of the collapse and on whether any claim lies against former management or the board. The liquidation is in its fourth year.
2. Zilingo’s former board and investors should publish the Kroll report, or hand it to the liquidators and to Bose. A finding that justified a dismissal for cause can survive daylight.
3. Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department and ACRA should state whether the irregularities investors described in 2023 were ever examined, and with what result.
4. The DLI resolution professional and NCLT Mumbai should complete the transaction audit under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code on a fixed timetable and put its conclusions on the record. Nearly ₹1,000 crore of mostly public-sector bank money is at stake.
5. The Reserve Bank of India and the lender banks should examine how a restructured account reached default within eighteen months and whether the lenders’ own monitoring was adequate.
6. Haryana Police should either register a case on the reported whistleblower complaint about Infrastructure India plc or close it and say so. An inquiry with no outcome serves nobody.
7. Mumbai Police should bring the 2024 complaint Bose filed against her former colleagues to a charge sheet or a closure report.
8. The Delhi and Bombay High Courts should hear the pending defamation suits to judgment quickly. Interim orders that last for years become final orders by default.

Speed is the demand, for both sides. If the record clears Krishan Rattan and Ankiti Bose, they are owed that clearance in a public document. If it does not, the public is owed that too.

Disclaimer

Allegations remain allegations. As of 9 October 2026, no court of law in any jurisdiction has convicted Krishan Rattan or Ankiti Bose of any offence. No court, regulator or enforcement agency has made a finding of fraud, dishonesty or other wrongdoing against either of them.

The civil claim against Krishan Rattan in the London Commercial Court was discontinued by consent without any finding against him. The statements in this article about that claim describe the claimants’ pleaded case, which was never tried. The costs order of July 2025 was procedural.

The forensic investigation that preceded Ankiti Bose’s dismissal from Zilingo has never been published, and no proceeding has been brought against her on the strength of it. She denies any wrongdoing.

Krishan Rattan ceased to be a director of Distribution Logistics Infrastructure Pvt Ltd before it was admitted to insolvency. The admission order names no director, and the company’s debts are not his personal liabilities.

References to Eric Watson, Infrastructure India plc and other third parties describe matters in which neither subject has been found at fault. Association with a person or company is not evidence of misconduct.

Both subjects have obtained interim court orders in pending defamation suits concerning earlier coverage of them. Those suits are undecided. This article is opinion and analysis based on court records, regulatory filings and published reports, and it raises questions in the public interest. Anything shown to be inaccurate will be corrected, and the subjects’ responses will be published in full.