Biggest bank fraud gets big action by CBI
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday filed a charge sheet against former Chief Executive and Managing Director of Yes Bank Rana Kapoor as well as Avantha Group promoter Gautam Thapar in the Rs.466.51 crore bank frauds. In its charge sheet filed before the special CBI court in Mumbai, the probe agency has also named Thapar and Oyster Buildwell Pvt Ltd (OBPL) in the scam.
Within six days of receiving a complaint from the then Chief Vigilance Officer Ashish Vinod Joshi, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed an FIR on June 2 last year against Thapar, directors of OBPL — Raghubir Kumar Sharma, Rajendra Kumar Mangal, and Tapsi Mahajan –, unidentified executives of Avantha Realty Pvt Ltd and Jhabua Power Ltd.
In total, industrialist Gautam Thapar is facing three cases of CBI for bank fraud. Apart from this case, CBI registered FIR for cheating banks consortium of Rs.2435 crores and another back cheating of Rs.307 crores. Enforcement Directorate also registered money laundering charges in connection with banking fraud cases of CBI.[1]
In Monday’s charge sheet, YES Bank MD Rana Kapoor is also co-accused with Thapar in another case related to the alleged diversion of public money in YES Bank in exchange for a high-end property in an upscale neighborhood of Delhi, said CBI officials. It is alleged in the case that the accused had indulged in a criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, and forgery for diversion of public money to the tune of Rs.466.51 crore, they said. Both were in jail for more than a year.
In the complaint by Yes Bank, now a part of the FIR, CBI said that Jhabua Power Limited (JPL), a group concern of OBPL, entered into a operations and maintenance contract for its 600 MW power plant with its holding company Jhabua Power Investment Ltd (JPIL) for 10 years. OBPL, part of the Avantha Group, was required to pay an interest-free refundable security deposit of Rs.515 crore to JPIL for which Yes Bank had sanctioned a long-term loan of Rs.515 crore for 10 years. The company defaulted in payments with the account turning into a non-performing asset on October 30, 2019.
During its forensic audit, the bank had found that only Rs.14.16 crore of the total Rs.514.27 crore disbursed by the bank were transferred to JPIL in its IndusInd Bank account, and the “ultimate end use of Rs.500.11 crore loan fund could not be ascertained”, said the complaint. The inspection of JPIL accounts had shown that it had granted an advance of Rs.345.15 crore to group company Avantha Power and Infrastructure Ltd from the security money received from OBPL, but in the absence of account statements of JPIL, the money trail could not be established by the auditor, said the charge sheet.
During an internal review of bank documents, Yes Bank found that the loans given to OBPL for the security deposit to JPIL were used by it to clear loans of Avantha group of Gautam Thapar.
Reference:
[1] CBI registers a third banking fraud case of Rs.2435 crore against Gautam Thapar. Earlier booked for Rs.307 crore and Rs.466 crore from Yes Bank. – Jun 25, 2021, PGurus.com
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Time has caught with them & get punished.