Bengaluru and Mumbai, July 29 -- Two years before his death in October 2024, Ratan Tata bequeathed a portion of his wealth to his personal charitable organization Ratan Tata Endowment Fund (RTEF), which received a cash gift, shares and a loan from Tata Group companies through a string of undisclosed transactions, a Mint investigation of corporate filings over a three-year period has revealed.

The transactions were approved by boards of a few Tata companies, including group holding company Tata Sons. Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who chairs Tata Sons since February 2017, also started chairing the board of RTEF a few months after Ratan Tata's demise. The endowment fund is the designated recipient of half of the shares that Ratan Tata owned in ...