Videocon loan case: 'Venugopal Dhoot bribed Kochhars to secure loan from ICICI Bank'

Videocon Group Chairman Venugopal Dhoot outside the special CBI court on Monday. Pics/Ashish Raje

Videocon Group Chairman Venugopal Dhoot was arrested in connection with the ICICI Bank loan fraud case on Monday morning. The arrest came three days after former ICICI Bank Managing Director Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar were arrested for allegedly causing wrongful loss of R1,730 crore to the bank. The probe has revealed that Dhoot had bribed Kochhar to secure a loan from the bank. Dhoot was produced before a special court and has been remanded in Central Bureau of Investigation's custody for three days.

The CBI claimed that Dhoot, who was questioned multiple times, had evaded various summons. As per CBI's remand application, a bank committee headed by Kochhar sanctioned a term loan of Rs 300 crore to Videocon International Electronics Limited (VIEL) on August 26, 2009 in contravention of rules and policies of the bank "in criminal conspiracies with the co-accused person dishonestly by abusing her official position as public servant." "The loan was disbursed on September 7, 2009. The very next day, Dhoot transferred Rs 64 crore to Nupower Renewables Ltd, managed by Deepak Kochhar," the CBI said.

The agency also alleged that Dhoot transferred a flat worth Rs 5.25 crore to Deepak Kochhar for a mere R11 lakh. Advocates who appeared for the Kochhars and Dhoot have called their arrest illegal and said that the loan taken from the bank had been repaid. The lawyer who appeared for Dhoot said that the arrest was illegal and sought interim bail for his client.

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Advocate Vikram Chaudhary, who appeared for Deepak Kochhar, told the court, "The CBI has not explained what it means by ‘non cooperation' which is the base of the arrest." He added, "When Kochhar was arrested by the ED and was languishing in jail for six months, he was not questioned even once by the CBI. Now the arrest has been made when their son is all set to get married on January 15. This seems staged. It has already been four years since the case was registered, and couldn't the CBI decide till now that the arrest was necessary? The entire circus is a virtual death for Kochhars."

Chanda Kochhar, former MD of ICICI Bank, was produced before a special CBI court on Monday. Pic/Ashish Raje

Advocate Amit Desai, for Chanda Kochhar, told the court that ICICI Bank itself had informed the prosecution that the loans had been repaid much before the FIR was filed and no wrongful loss was caused to the bank. "Both Chanda and Deepak Kochhar carried documents of over 2,500 pages in anticipation of what the CBI might need for its investigation but CBI didn't accept these documents," said Desai.

The prosecution lawyer, however, said, "It is wrong to say that dues were repaid there is still an outstanding of R1,000 crore." The claim was strongly objected by all defence lawyers who said that this was factually incorrect and that there was no outstanding as per the letter given by ICICI Bank.