The Enforcement Directorate on Monday arrested Deepak Kochhar, the husband of former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar, in connection with alleged irregularities and corrupt practices in the sanctioning of Rs 1,875 crore of loans by ICICI Bank.
Deepak Kocchar was reportedly placed under arrest after refusing to cooperate and will be placed before an anti-money laundering court in Delhi on Tuesday.
On January 31, the ED had lodged a money laundering case against both Chanda and Deepak Kochhar, as well as against Videocon Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Venugopal Dhoot, in relation to the ICICI Bank-Videocon money laundering case.
The CBI had earlier alleged that Chanda sanctioned loans to private companies in a criminal conspiracy to cheat ICICI Bank. In a preliminary enquiry, it had found that six loans worth Rs 1,875 crore were sanctioned to the Videocon Group and companies associated with it between June 2009 and October 2011, in alleged violation of ICICI bank’s laid-down policies—these loans were later declared NPAs in 2012.
In its FIR, on which base the ED conducted raids in March of 2019, it named Chanda and Deepak Kochhar, Dhoot and Dhoot’s companies—Videocon International Electronics Ltd (VIEL) and Videocon Industries Limited (VIL)—as well as Supreme Energy, a company founded by Dhoot, and NuPower Renewables, a company controlled by Deepak Kochhar.
During Chanda's questioning in 2019, she claimed that loan approval was a collective decision and not an individual one, and denied any wrongdoing.
With inputs from PTI
