Tarun Bhatia

Tarun

Bhatia

Regional Managing Director, Co-Head of APAC

Tarun Bhatia is a Regional Managing Director and Co-Head of Asia Pacific region in the Forensic Investigations and Intelligence practice, based in Mumbai. Tarun leverages over 20 years of extensive experience in evaluating, measuring and monitoring risks across corporate India, South Asia, South-East Asia and Oceania region.

Tarun actively advises clients on domestic and cross-border investments, partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions. He also helps clients manage their litigation and dispute resolution process by providing investigative services and asset tracing support. Tarun leads the white-collar crime and financial fraud related investigations in the region focusing on whistle blowing investigations, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) remediation and Insolvency and Bankruptcy related investigations. His diverse client roster includes large conglomerates, banks and financial institutions, and corporations across automotive, consumer goods, energy, healthcare, infrastructure, real estate and technology sectors.

Prior to joining Kroll, Tarun was Senior Director at CRISIL, a subsidiary of Standard & Poor’s, where he played a critical role in the transformation of the company from a domestic rating agency to a global analytical company. At CRISIL, he had a demonstrated track record of incubating and scaling profitable businesses both in India and international markets. Previously, Tarun worked in SBI Capital Markets, a leading investment bank, as part of their Financial Engineering Group responsible for structuring and selling complex financial instruments.

Tarun has published many articles on corporate governance, the Indian banking industry and capital markets which have been featured in Indian and international journals. He has also appeared as a commentator on leading Indian and international news channels talking about governance and fraud. He is an invitee member to the CFO Forum at Confederation of India Industry (CII).

Tarun has particular expertise in counseling Indian banks, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), and asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) on risk management and successful recovery from non-performing assets (NPAs). He has successfully assisted clients in recovering substantial sums of money through tracing of targets and their liquid & illiquid assets across jurisdictions by applying new and innovative means including actively using data and social media analytics. Tarun was engaged by a large bank in India to do a forensic investigation on their USD 6 billion (bn) NPA focusing on the end use of funds, related party transactions, conflict of interest and ultimately carrying out a global asset tracing exercise on their promoters. He helped the client identify significant quantum of assets in India and other jurisdictions ultimately enabling the client to recover a meaningful part of the dues.

Tarun’s personal casework has included multi-jurisdictional investigations into allegations of employee misconduct including theft of intellectual property and data theft; bribery and corruption related investigations including alleged FCPA violations; multiple shareholder dispute related investigations especially involving family disputes. He was engaged by the board of directors of a leading multinational company to investigate the integrity of the CEO of their Indian operations and do a detailed forensic assessment of their books and records of Indian operations which had misreported the financial performance for three years. Tarun also led an investigation on behalf of a leading development fund to understand the ultimate beneficial ownership of a large Indian infrastructure company and help assess potential money laundering risks. He also led a multiple phase AML remediation exercise for the largest private sector bank in Bangladesh helping them build a best-in-class risk-based platform and transaction monitoring system.

Tarun advises investors and founders, providing them critical business intelligence, and has led multiple due diligence assignments for financial institutions and private equity, advising them on prospective investments. Tarun has significant experience in assessing business, operational, financial, and management risks across sectors. He also has experience in assisting clients with actionable market intelligence related to entering new regions and geographies, competitor intelligence, industry benchmarking and impact of regulatory changes. He has carried out over 1000 due diligences over the last eight years across sectors. He has also been actively assisting Indian and global firms to help them in assessment of their local ESG and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) partners. This involves closely looking at the operations of the not-for-profit organizations and the reputation of their founders specifically focusing on their track record, source of funds and litigation history.

Since outbreak of COVID 19, Tarun has been guiding clients across sectors with their compliance monitoring and proactive fraud risk management assessment. He works very closely with private equity firms helping them in their portfolio monitoring process, helping investee companies in building a compliance led ecosystem and investigating frauds withing the portfolio companies.

In his earlier roles Tarun has advised clients and helped them raise funds (more than USD 10 bn) by structuring financial solutions. As an investment banker, he has structured transactions across asset classes, including collateralized debt obligations, guarantee backed structures, future receivable securitization, and subordinate debt. Tarun also has deep knowledge of the outsourcing and data analytics industry. At CRISIL, he led their entry into global markets and was based in New York, spearheading a 150-member offshore team catering to clients across the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific. He has closely worked with data vendors and IT companies in developing products, tools, and databases to support processing of complex data and financial reports.

Tarun has completed his Master of Management Studies from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, University of Mumbai. He has completed his Bachelor of Commerce from University of Mumbai.



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