The Kochhars were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) last Friday. Dhoot was arrested on Monday. The three were produced before special judge S H Gwalani at the end of their earlier remand on Thursday.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday arrested the former CFO and internal auditor of the Cox and Kings Group in connection with its money laundering probe in the Yes Bank alleged loan default case. The agency said ex-chief financial officer Anil Khandelwal and internal auditor Naresh Jain were arrested under the provision of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act
A special Central Bureau of Investigation court here on Wednesday extended till December 29 the CBI custody of former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar, her husband Deepak Kochhar and Videocon group founder Venugopal Dhoot in connection with a loan fraud case. The probe agency arrested Kochhars last Friday after questioning them briefly. Dhoot was arrested on Monday.
Bankers have decided to fight back against 'arbitrary arrests' and 'harassment' by probe agencies.
The Bombay high court on Monday granted bail to former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar in a loan fraud case, saying their arrest was not in accordance with the provisions of law. A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and P K Chavan held that the arrest of Kochhars was in violation of Section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which mandates sending notice for appearance before the police officer concerned. The couple was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on December 23, 2022 in connection with the Videocon-ICICI Bank loan case.
'A credit line on UPI is going to make banks think about credit fundamentally as they digitise the credit process entirely.'
Justice Bharati Dangre granted them bail as the Enforcement Directorate failed to file its charge sheet in the case within the stipulated 60-day period.
Pawan Kumar Soni, a 55-year-old farmer based in Sri Ganganagar City in Rajasthan, became a victim of a cyber fraud when his 26-year-old son Harsh Vardhan opened a link from a phishing message that flashed on his mobile phone.
The probe agency found irregularities in loans amounting Rs 3,642 crore sanctioned by Yes Bank to the travel firm.
Banks recovered Rs 18,933 crore (Rs 189.33 billion) worth of bad loans during the April-December period.
A State Bank of India (SBI)-led consortium that gave loans to fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya on Friday received Rs 5,824.5 crore in its accounts after shares of UBL, earlier attached under the anti-money laundering law, were sold recently, the ED said. Mallya is accused in a multiple banks loan default case of about Rs 9,000 crore. The disputes resolution tribunal (DRT) had sold these shares on June 23 after the Enforcement Directorate had transferred shares worth about Rs 6,624 crore of UBL to the SBI-led consortium on the directions of a special PMLA court that is hearing the case involving Mallya in Mumbai. These shares were attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by the ED, a central probe agency.
According to the RTI reply, absconding diamantaire Choksi's company Gitanjali Gems tops the list of the defaulters with a whopping amount of Rs 5,492 crore. This is followed by REI Agro with Rs 4,314 crore and Winsome Diamonds with Rs 4,076 crore. Rotomac Global Private Limited has funded advances of Rs 2,850 crore which have been technically written off and Kudos Chemie Ltd with Rs 2,326 crore, Ruchi Soya Industries Limited, now owned by Ramdev's Patanjali, with Rs 2,212 crore and Zoom Developers Pvt Ltd with Rs 2,012 crore being the other companies to default on the payment. Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines figures in the list at number 9, with outstanding of Rs 1943 crore which have been technically written off by the banks.
It has also said that orders were issued by the courts after hearing the counsels of ED and Mallya, officials said.
Manjeet Bawa, 46, of New York and other co-defendants contracted to buy homes in Nassau and Suffolk Counties from innocent sellers at market prices.
Cox & Kings is currently going through the corporate insolvency resolution process. Around 2,500 operational creditors have submitted claims of over Rs 631 crore, 2,440 employees and workman have claimed dues of over Rs 94 crore and other creditors have submitted claims of over Rs 3 crore.
The size of Reserve Bank's balance sheet increased by 11.08 per cent to Rs 70.47 lakh crore as on March 2024, leading to the highest-ever dividend payout to the government, according to the central bank's annual report. In actual terms, the increase was Rs 7,02,946.97 crore over Rs 63.45 lakh crore as on March 2023.
The special court on Monday rejected Kingfisher's plea challenging ED's claim that Rs 430 crore (Rs 4.3 billion) was siphoned off and used to acquire properties abroad.
In a major blow to Nirav Modi, a bankruptcy court in the US has rejected a petition of the fugitive diamond merchant and two of his associates, seeking dismissal of fraud allegations against them by the trustee of three companies they previously owned indirectly.
The attorney general told the apex court that the invasion of privacy was very minimal in Aadhaar and it may not even be considered as an invasion.
The incidence of corruption cases can be checked to a large extent if the suggestions already available with RBI and the government are taken seriously, says Shyamal Majumdar.
The crisis in Indian banking has now reached a point where the NPAs of many public-sector banks are higher than their net worth
The Commission observed vulnerability of junior untrained staff on probation and their misuse by senior officials.
In the atmosphere created by the reaction to the PNB fraud and RBI's resolution framework, "don't lend, don't resolve" is bound to become the bankers' new mantra, says T T Ram Mohan.
The CBI has filed an FIR against Amrapali Leisure Valley Developers Pvt Ltd, its director Anil Sharma and others for allegedly cheating Bank of Maharashtra and Andhra Bank of over Rs 230 crore, officials said on Friday. The banks had sanctioned credit facilities to develop a housing building at the Tech Zone IV in Uttar Pradesh's Greater Noida on a plot measuring 1.06 lakh square metre, the FIR alleged. The company failed to maintain financial discipline following which the account was declared a non-performing asset on March 31, 2017, the complaint from Bank of Maharashtra, now part of the FIR, has alleged, adding that "it has resulted in the loss of over Rs 230.97 crore". Following the FIR, the CBI Thursday conducted searches at four locations in Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad, they said.
While the collapse of a large financial intermediary can wreak havoc on the system because of the interconnectivity, a large business conglomerate too can play spoilsport if the banks have too much exposure to the entity, explains Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Indeed, there were frauds, and the politician-banker-industrialist nexus played a role in the rise of NPAs, but governance issues in Indian banking are far more nuanced and complex, reveals Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The Dominica high court has stayed the removal of Choksi from its soil and put a gag order on the developments till the matter is heard in an open court on June 2.
Mallya said, the ED on the one side and the banks on the other are fighting over the same assets.
The ED had conducted searches against the legislator, Sai Aaina Farms Pvt Ltd (now Mahira Infratech Pvt Ltd), other companies of the Mahira Group and some others in July last year.
If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum penalty of 30 years.
Without naming either the alleged kingpin of the fraud, billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi, or Punjab National Bank, Jaitley questioned the ethics of some businesses in the country and asked as to why the bank's internal and external auditors could not detect the fraud which had been going on for 7 long years.
Housing finance company (HFC) PNB Housing is planning to focus on reducing delinquencies in 2023-24.
The Bombay high court on Tuesday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to file by Friday its affidavit in response to a petition of Videocon Group founder Venugopal Dhoot, seeking to quash an FIR registered in a bank loan fraud case, to declare his arrest as "arbitrary and illegal" and to be released on bail. When the plea came up for hearing, advocate Kuldeep Patil asked for one-week time to seek instructions on the same. A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and P K Chavan said the agency shall file its affidavit by Friday and posted the petition for hearing the same day (January 13).
'We found certain banks having lakhs of such accounts with apparently no valid reason.'
RTI activist Anil Galgali had asked SBI about the total amount of loans given to the beleaguered businessman.
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) is considering a proposal to make insurance frauds a parameter for calculating credit scores in an attempt to put a lid on the increase in such activity. The proposal, which is a part of the recommendations made by a working group formed by Irdai and the General Insurance Council, suggests that insurance frauds should feature when the risk profiles of individuals are evaluated and should be used to calculate their credit scores. A poor credit score can deprive a person of financial services such as loans and credit cards, and deter him from indulging in fraud.
The Income Tax Department had last month auctioned several art works that were owned by absconding diamond merchant Nirav Modi for Rs 59.37 crore.
The lawyer of Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot on Friday argued before the Bombay high court that the industrialist's arrest in the ICICI Bank loan fraud case was unwarranted as he was cooperating with the probe. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on the other hand, claimed that he was trying to avoid probe. Dhoot, arrested by the CBI on December 26, 2022, and presently in judicial custody, has moved the high court seeking to quash the First Information Report, and has also sought interim bail.
Theoretically, Modi, who understood corporate finance, committed no crime by raising debt to fund a growing business. In fact, he did a tidy job of it, but his operation started to see the ground underneath it give way in January 2018. A fascinating excerpt from Pavan C Lall's Flawed: The Rise And Fall Of India's Diamond Mogul Nirav Modi.