Mrs Fraud caught in web: ED staples Chanda Kochhar’s assets worth Rs 78 crore
New Delhi, January 11: The Enforcement Directorate has attached assets and shares belonging to Mrs Fraud i.e. former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar on Friday in relation to the ICICI Bank-Videocon loan scam. A total worth of the attached assets is estimated to be above Rs 78 crore, but their market value is expected to be much higher.
In its tweet, ED said, “ED attaches Flat, Land, seized cash, plant & machinery i.e. Windfarm Projects located in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra totaling to ₹ 78.15 Crores in possession of Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Kochhar and the companies controlled by Deepak Kochhar, under PMLA in ICICI Bank loan case.”
The loan controversy erupted after shareholder activist Arvind Gupta had alleged that Chanda Kochhar, sitting on the bank's credit committee in 2012, influenced a Rs 3,250 crore loan to the Videocon group in return for a deal in NuPower Renewables, a clean-energy firm run by her husband Deepak Kochhar.
ED attaches Flat, Land, seized cash, plant & machinery i.e. Windfarm Projects located in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra totaling to ₹ 78.15 Crores in possession of Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Kochhar and the companies controlled by Deepak Kochhar, under PMLA in ICICI Bank loan case.
— ED (@dir_ed) January 10, 2020
The investigating agency is also probing several former and current senior executives of the bank, including current Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Bank Sandeep Bakshi and current chief of New Development Bank of BRICS KV Kamath.
In March last year, the ED had conducted a series of searches at the residence and office premises of the Kochhars as part of its investigations and also questioned Chanda and Deepak along with Dhoot. The ED action was based on a CBI FIR.