ICICI Bank’s former CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar.
ICICI Bank’s former CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar have been sent to CBI custody till Monday by a Mumbai Special Court Saturday afternoon in connection with alleged cheating and irregularities in loans sanctioned by the bank to Videocon Group companies. The CBI had sought their custody for three days.
The CBI lawyer in the court said that they have arrested accused number four and five, as per the First Investigation Report registered with them.
“Accused 4 was MD and CEO of ICICI in 2009 and the fifth one is her husband,” the lawyer said.
He said that after Chanda Kochhar became the MD and CEO of the bank, six loans were sanctioned to Videocon and its subsidiary companies and Chanda was a part of the committees that sanctioned two of the loans.
“The loan amount of Rs1,800 crore has been given to the company,” the CBI lawyer added mentioning that another loan of amount Rs 300 crore was given to a company whose part was Deepak Kochhar.
“We are filing an application to invoke IPC section 409 also in this case. We had already given a notice to both the accused under section 41 of the CrPC, but since they did not cooperate so we arrested them,” he said underscoring that they had sent a notice to the couple to appear before it on December 15 but they said they would appear four days later and did not come on 19th as well.
“They came yesterday (23 December 2022) and due to non-cooperation, they were arrested. To confront them with the spam evidence and documents of the case we should be given three days’ custody of both the accused,” the CBI lawyer argued.
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The CBI had named the Kochhars and Dhoot, along with companies Nupower Renewables (NRL) managed by Deepak Kochhar, Supreme Energy, Videocon International Electronics Ltd and Videocon Industries Limited, as accused in the FIR registered under IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act in 2019, they said.
The CBI had alleged that ICICI Bank had sanctioned credit facilities to the tune of Rs3,250 crore to the companies of Videocon Group promoted by Dhoot in violation of the Banking Regulation Act, RBI guidelines, and credit policy of the bank.
It was also alleged that as a part of the quid pro quo, Dhoot made an investment of Rs64 crore in Nupower Renewables through Supreme Energy Pvt Ltd (SEPL) and transferred SEPL to Pinnacle Energy Trust managed by Deepak Kochhar through a circuitous route between 2010 and 2012.
To recall, the CBI had booked Chanda Kochhar, her husband and Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon Group, along with companies Nupower Renewables, Supreme Energy, Videocon International Electronics Ltd and Videocon Industries Limited, as accused in the FIR registered under IPC sections related to criminal conspiracy and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
