Plagued by apprehensions after Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi managed to flee the country before the law enforcement agencies could lay hands on them in multi-crore bank fraud cases, the complainant in the Rotomac case has expressed concern to the CBI that the directors and guarantors of Rotomac Global Private Limited – Vikram Kothari, Sadhana Kothari and Rahul Kothari – may flee the country to skip the legal and criminal proceedings against them.
The CBI has registered a case against Rotomac Global Private Limited, its Directors – Vikram Kothari, Sadhana Kothari, Rahul Kothari – and unknown bank officials on a complaint from Bank of Baroda. While the CBI registered a case against the Kanpur based businessman on Sunday evening, the ED on Monday registered a case under Prevention of Money Laundering Act against him.
“The public money of bank is at stake and the escaping of directors of the companies from India will be a cause of emanating various other legal intricacies like extraditon. Therefore to check the corporate debtor from escaping the country, we request earnestly to either seize or confiscate the passport from its bearer who are the directors or guarantors of the company that is, Vikram Kothari, Sadhana Kothari and Rahul Kothari,'' says Brajesh Kumar Singh, the deputy general manager and regional head of Bank of Baroda in Kanpur in his compliant to the CBI dated February 18, 2017.
Stung by the embarrassment over billionaire jewellery designer Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, promoter of Geetanjali group of companies leaving the country, days before the Punjab National Bank scam was unearthed by the law enforcement agencies, the CBI and Enforcement Directorate are closing in on Kothari. While no arrests have been made in the case yet, sources in CBI said the accused may be formally put under arrest soon.
The CBI is probing how the conspirators in the case allegedly cheated a consortium of 7 banks by siphoning off bank loans to the tune of Rs 2919 crore (principal amount). This does not include the interest liabilities of these loans, according to the CBI.
A CBI spokesperson said that the total outstanding amount, along with interest liabilities for Rotomac is Rs 3695 crore.
The banks involved are the Bank of Baroda, Bank of Maharashtra, Indian Overseas Bank, Union Bank of India, Allahabad Bank and Oriental Bank of Commerce.
Apart from conducting searches at three places in Kanpur and questioning all the three accused Directors, the CBI has also sealed a residential premise and an office of the Rotomac Directors in New Delhi. Meanwhile, the ED has registered a case of money laundering.
According to the CBI officials, the company allegedly did not produce full set of documents for all the trades carried out under mercantile trade segment which raises suspicion about the genuineness of these transactions. It is also alleged that the company used to submit photocopy of bills and other papers of merchant transactions to bank on the pretext that original papers were directly sent to the importer. ''All these papers were originated at overseas centres. The company misutilized the facility and submitted the documents related to mercantile trade on the basis of which chain of the transaction could not be established. Genuineness of these bills submitted by the client to the branch is doubtful. In most of the cases insurance of goods is not submitted,'' says the CBI in its FIR.
The CBI also found that the company's business operations were being carried out through fictitious and front companies. The company is alleged to have submitted false and forged documents and dishonestly induced banks to advance money, thereby cheating the banks and fraudulently siphoning off funds causing financial loss to the bank and wrongful gain to itself to the tune of Rs 456 crore, which is still outstanding and to be recovered from the company and the accused persons. The CBI also alleged that the accused have worked for interest rate differential in local and foreign currency in guise of merchant trade without having any genuine business transactions and defaulted in meeting its payments obligation to the bank by diverting the funds.
