Deepak Kochhar sent to ED custody for 11 days

Mumbai : A special court in Mumbai on Tuesday sent businessman Deepak Kochhar to 11 days custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) which arrested him late on Monday in a money-laundering case.

Kochhar, the husband of the high-profile former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar, is facing charges of money-laundering in the ICICI Bank-Videocon Group case.

He was produced before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act court this afternoon and sent to the ED custody till September 19.

The action came nearly a year after the Central Bureau of Investigation launched a probe against Videocon Group Director Venugopal Dhoot, his companies Videocon International Electronics Ltd. and Videocon Industries Ltd, and the Kochhars.

Following the CBI complaint, the ED launched its own probe into the money-laundering angle, and earlier this year, provisionally attached assets valued at around Rs 78 crore including a flat in Mumbai, land, and plant and machinery of a wind power project in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, which were “owned/controlled” by the Kochhars.

The probe revealed that bank loans were refinanced and new loans aggregating to Rs 1,730 crore were sanctioned to Videocon and its group companies, and these loans later became non-performing assets (NPA) for ICICI Bank on June 30, 2017.

Besides, an amount of Rs 64 crore from the Rs 300 crore loans cleared by a ICICI Bank committee headed by Chanda Kochhar to VIEL was transferred to NuPower Renewables Pvt. Ltd (NRPL), a company owned by her husband, by VIL in September 8, 2009, a day after it was disbursed by the bank.

Kochhar’s company generated a revenue of Rs 10.65 crore from these funds and the ED said the proceeds of crime totalling to over Rs 74 crore was transferred to his NRPL.