Scamming a system is not an easy task, especially in a democracy. Apart from biggies of their own domain, a fraudster has to take multiple stakeholders on board. The most important of them are political heavyweights. It won’t be an overstretched argument to state that the Kochhars too would have some big political backing.
Kochhars arrested
Chanda Kochhar, once the so called shining star on the horizon of the Indian banking system, has been arrested. Along with Chanda, her husband Deepak Kochhar is also under CBI radar. Both have been accused of frauding ICICI Bank of Rs 1,730 Crore. Along with CBI, ED, Income Tax Department and Serious Frauds Investigation Office are also conducting parallel investigations.
The roots of the case can be traced way back to UPA days. At that time, Chanda was the global face of the Indian banking industry. Due to her gender, her success grabbed serious headlines. However, behind the scenes, things were not exactly neat and clean, to say the least. Her husband Deepak Kochhar is a semi-famous face in the business world. It won’t be wrong to say that Chanda’s clout was a big factor in his success and vice-versa.
Also read: Rise and fall of Chanda Kochhar
Deepak Kochhar made fortunes from ICICI loans
According to investigative agencies, Chanda put ICICI’s accounts at stake for her husband. Between June 2009 and October 2011, Kochhar lent ICICI sanctioned loans worth Rs 1,875 crore to Videocon group. Allegations of money laundering by the Kochhar couple in this deal have come to fore. In 2012, another loan worth Rs 3,250 crore had been sanctioned by Chanda led ICICI for the same Videocon group.
Deepak Kochhar is a common link between ICICI and Videocon. Through ICICI, he established connections through his wife while he and Venugopal Dhoot, a promoter of Videocon group together established a company named NuPower Renewables Pvt Ltd. Under Chanda, ICICI was particularly favouring NuPower Renewables. Essar group had invested in NuPower Renewables in December 2010. In the same month, Chanda led ICICI led a consortium of Indian Banks that extended a $530 million loan to Essar Steel Minnesota LLC. No reasonable person would not see them without any susceptive lens.
Maze of shady deals was not hidden from insiders
Even in the aforementioned 2012 deal, Chanda did not show integrity by telling ICICI that she could be in a position of conflict of interest for the Rs 3,250 crore loan. She did not recuse from the credit committee. The FIR against Chanda states that she accepted “illegal gratification through her husband.”
Six months after the massive loan was finalised, Venugopal Dhoot transferred proprietorship of the company to Deepak led trust for Rs 9 lakh. It was over and above Rs 64 crore invested by Venugopal in Nupower Renewables Ltd (NRL) through Supreme Energy Pvt Ltd (SEPL). SEPL was transferred to Pinnacle Energy Trust managed by Deepak Kochhar.
All of these deals were apparent to few individuals and an investor named Arvind Gupta complained about Kochhars’ business links. The bank seems to have gotten serious only after 2017, the year in which Videocon account was declared as NPA. Other than political connections, nothing else explains this smokescreen.
Also read: She could have been an icon for women world over, but Chanda Kochhar took the wrong road
Need to probe the political angle
These loans were sanctioned during UPA days. Between 2009 and 2012, the time period in which these loans were sanctioned, India saw 3 finance Ministers including PM Manmohan himself taking charge for 35 days. The other two were UPA stalwarts P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee. It is highly improbable that they did not get a whiff about the possible shadiness.
Even NPA classification of the loan came in 2017, nearly 3 years after the Modi government tightened the norms for classifying defaults as NPAs. Investigations also took a painstakingly long time to lay out charges. There came a time when the CBI was pondering whether to investigate K V Kamath, ICICI Bank CEO Sandeep Bakshi, Goldman Sachs India chairman Sonjoy Chatterjee, Standard Chartered Bank CEO Zarin Daruwala, Tata Capital head Rajiv Sabharwal and Tata Capital senior advisor Homi Khusrokha or not. Late Shri Arun Jaitley had criticised the CBI over what he termed as ‘investigative adventurism’.
Now, there are talks of taking away civilian honour given to Chanda. It will only be symbolic until her political connections are not unearthed and sent behind bars.
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