ICICI Videocon loan fraud case: ED names Venugopal Dhoot’s nephew, Saurabh Dhoot as accused

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has named Videocon Chairman Venugopal Dhoot’s nephew, Saurabh Dhoot, as an accused in its charge sheet submitted before the sessions court last week in the loan fraud case concerning the Videocon Group. ICICI Bank suffered a loss of ₹1,033 crore, the agency said.

The senior Dhoot, former ICICI Bank MD-CEO Chanda Kocchar and her husband Deepak Kocchar are accused and were arrested during investigation in December last year. The trio are out on bail. Dhoot’s chartered accountant Uttamrao Kadam is also named as an accused by the agency.

Saurabh Dhoot submitted false certificate prepared by CA to bank

Saurabh Dhoot was an authorised signatory of Videocon International Electronics Ltd (VIEL). The agency alleges in its probe document that he submitted a false certificate prepared by the chartered accountant to the bank. This certificate showed that loans taken from the bank were utilised for the purpose for which they were sanctioned and disbursed.

The CBI states in the charge sheet that while the loans were taken for the purpose of paying suppliers, they were instead used for evergreening of old loans.

Loans sanctioned after Chanda Kochhar took over

The charge sheet, running close to 11,000 pages, contains statements of as many as 78 witnesses. As per the agency’s allegations, immediately after the arrest of the Kocchars and Dhoot, there were two instances of kickbacks received by the Kochhars for disbursing loans to Dhoot’s Videocon Group firms.

Chanda Kochhar was heading the bank and sanctioned these loans after she took over. The agency says she was on the loan sanctioning committee for two of these loans. In one of the instances of corruption, a company managed by her husband allegedly received ₹64 crore a day after ICICI Bank disbursed one loan of ₹300 crore.