Agencies’ ‘tricks’ prevent banks from realising dues: Sandesaras

The Sandesaras, absconding accused in a Rs 8,100-crore Sterling Biotech bank fraud case, have denied any wrongdoing and charged probe agencies with “playing dirty tricks in the garb of their investigations to actually ruin the settlement and prevent the banks from realising their dues”.

In a detailed rebuttal to the Enforcement Directorate’s response against an appeal filed by the four accused in the Delhi High Court against a lower court order declaring them as fugitive economic offenders, they alleged that the lower court “acted in a mechanical manner”.

A local court in Delhi had in September last year declared four directors of pharmaceuticals firm Sterling Biotech – Nitin and Chetan Sandesara, the latter’s wife Dipti, and the Sandesaras’ brother-in-law Hiteshkumar Nirendrabhai Patel – as fugitive economic offenders.

“Even after a lapse of four years since the inception of FIR, CBI has failed to file” any charge sheet, the accused said in their rebuttal. ET has reviewed a copy of it.

The CBI had registered an FIR in the Sterling Biotech fraud case on August 30, 2017. Three income-tax commissioners also stand booked by the agency.

The four accused have denied association with a diary, which was allegedly recovered from one of the premises of Sterling Biotech raided by the income-tax sleuths in June 2011. The said diary, allegedly maintained by an employee of a company, contains handwritten records of certain alleged transactions of the group between June 1, 2011 to June 28, 2011.