Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested global tours and travel company Cox & Kings Group (CKG) promoter Peter Kerkar in an alleged money-laundering case on Thursday.
Last month, the agency had arrested the company's CFO Anil Khandelwal and Internal Auditor Naresh Jain in a money laundering case linked to its ongoing Yes Bank probe.
A senior officer confirmed Kerkar’s arrest to The Free Press Journal on Thursday. On March 8, the ED had arrested Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor. The agency has been scanning the bank's loan transactions.
Investigations revealed that Yes Bank has a total outstanding of Rs 3,642 crore in respect of CKG. The ED said that CKG had forged its consolidated financials by manipulating the balance sheets of overseas subsidiaries. In addition, some board resolutions submitted to banks to sanction the loans were also found to be forged. The loan sanction from Yes Bank was driven by Kapoor and given bypassing the norms. “ED gathered the evidence regarding clear instructions by Kapoor to the concerned bank officials to get the said loan continued and not make efforts to recover it,” the agency had earlier said.
Investigation also revealed that, during FY 2015 to 2019, Rs 3,908 crore in sales were made to 15 non-existent/fictitious customers. The majority of collection shown in the ledgers, from Ezeego, (another group entity of CKG ) was not found in the bank statements.
There are 15 high-value fictitious debtors reflected in the account books and another 147 sets of customers also appeared to be suspicious and non-existent, the agency said.
Cox and Kings Limited (CKL) has diverted Rs 1,100 crore to another stressed company with which it has no business relationship, without approval from the board,. Investigation conducted so far has revealed that the bank transactions of CKG do not match with the account books. The travel company was sent to bankruptcy court last year in October, after it defaulted on payments to the bank. The ED had initiated investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, against Kapoor and others, on the basis of an FIR registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
