Days after ICICI CEO Chanda Kochhar was asked to go on an indefinite paid leave, the IT department is now probing the complex transactions linked to her family residence in South Mumbai. As per the reports in Indian Express, the land acquisition deal of the house involving firms linked to Videocon Group has come under the scanner of the Income Tax dept.
Earlier, whistleblower and investor Arvind Gupta had alleged that loans benefited Kochhar’s husband Deepak. Videocon promoter Venugopal Dhoot had an investment in Deepak Kochhar’s NuPower Renewables. Meanwhile, on Monday ICICI Bank initiated its own probe and announced that Ms Kochhar will be on leave until the probe gets over.
As per the daily, the Income Tax department is probing the acquisition of Kochhar’s’ flat at 45, CCI Chambers CHS Limited, following which it informed the CBDT about its findings. Tax officials have found that their residence was bought by a financial firm, Credential Finance, set up by Deepak Kochhar and his brother, Rajiv Kochhar in the mid-1990s. In 1996-97, the firm Credential Finance Ltd filed for liquidation due to financial stress and, hence, was suspended from trading.
For those unversed, media reports earlier in March highlighted an alleged involvement of Chanda Kochhar and her family members in an Rs 3,250-crore loan provided to the Videocon group on quid pro quo basis in 2012.
Soon after, Gupta said the evidence in the case pointed out that Chanda Kochhar was herself a beneficiary of the loan, and her husband is an indirect beneficiary of the loan granted to Videocon. The IT department, in the first week of April, had sent a notice to NuPower Renewables.
Thereafter, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) called in a number of officials for questioning in the aforementioned case, including Umanath Venkat Naik, the director of NuPower Renewables, the former director of NuPower Renewables, Mahesh Pugalia, and Rajeev Kochhar, the brother-in-law of Chanda Kochhar.