Digital Desk: Chanda Kochhar, the former managing director and chief executive officer of ICICI Bank, and her husband Deepak Kochhar were placed under three days of detention on Saturday by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In connection with the suspected ICICI Bank-Videocon money laundering case, the CBI detained the couple on Friday.
According to the First Investigation Report that they registered with them, the CBI lawyer testified in court that they have detained Accused Numbers 4 and 5.
“Accused 4 was MD and CEO of ICICI in 2009 and the fifth one is her husband,” the lawyer said.
He said that six loans were approved for Videocon and its subsidiary firms after Chanda Kochhar was named the bank’s MD and CEO, and Chanda was a member of the committees that approved two of the loans.
“The loan amount of Rs 1,800 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 December 19 as well.
“They came yesterday (December 23) 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.
Amit Desai, the Kochhars’ lawyer, argued in the meantime, highlighting the fact that industrialist Venugopal Dhoot of the Videocon Group was also included in the FIR that was filed.
He said, “Years after the FIR was registered against them, none of the Kochhars were called for joining the investigation and then they suddenly sent notice for December 15 which was changed to yesterday only with the approval of the CBI.”
“If there was no need for investigation till January 2019, why have they been arrested now?” he asked.
The issue concerns alleged irregularities and unethical tactics in the approval of a loan of Rs 1,875 crore that the ICICI Bank disbursed to the Videocon Group between 2009 and 2011.
The CBI discovered during its initial investigation that between June 2009 and October 2011, six loans totaling Rs 1,875 crore were approved for the Videocon Group and businesses connected to it, allegedly in violation of ICICI Bank’s established norms.
According to the CBI, the loans were classified as non-performing assets in 2012, which resulted in a loss for the bank of Rs 1,730 crore.