Business

CBI Questions Chanda Kochhar’s Brother-in-law in Connection with Videocon loan

RAJIV Kochhar, brother-in-law (husband’s brother) of high profile ICICI Bank MD & CEO Chanda Kochhar, was again quizzed on Friday after he was stopped from boarding a flight to Singapore from Mumbai on Thursday He was taken to an undisclosed destination for questioning by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Media reports say a look-out circular was issued against Rajiv and other members of the Kochhar family so that none of them are able to leave the country like diamond merchants Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi. Meanwhile, Jodhpur born Chanda Kochhar, 56, remains under the scanner of the CBI and Enforcement Directorate despite the bank ruled out her role as a conflict of interest in a questionable loan approved to her husband owned company by a consortium of lenders.ICICI is one of the banks of the consortium and she had played no major role in the Videocon loan, the ICICI said in a statement. But to make the matters worse for her, banking regulator Reserve Bank of India is yet to okay year-end bonuses to her and Shikha Sharma, her Axis Bank CEO questioning the size of the payouts citing the lenders’ performance issues .The CBI has filed for preliminary inquiry against Chanda Kochhar, her husband Deepak and brother Rajiv and others as part of a probe in the Rs 3,250-crore loan issued to the Videocon group in 2012.The preliminary inquiry comes after media reports alleged that financial dealings of Deepak’s companies coincided with the big loans made by ICICI Bank to Videocon. Rajiv Kochhar, who runs a firm called Avista Advisory in Singapore, is reported to have business dealings with several companies that had borrowed money from ICICI Bank but are now facing bankruptcy, says The Economic Times. RBI should have approved the bonuses well before March 31, 2018, said Ashutosh Kumar Mishra, a Mumbai-based banking analyst at Reliance Securities Ltd. “We have never noticed such delay in approving the payouts, but then we haven’t seen a year in which so many skeletons were brought out of the closet, ET says. Meanwhile, former Deputy Governor of RBI, Harun Rashid Khan, being reportedly questioned by CBI in multi crore PNB scam. Incidentally, Kochhar resides in Mumbai, and is married to Deepak Kochhar, a wind energy entrepreneur and her business schoolmate. They have two children, a daughter. Shikha Sharma, 60, daughter of an army officer, is married to Sanjaya Sharma, her batch-mate at IIM-A. Sanjaya is ex- Chief Executive Officer of Tata Interactive Systems. The couple have two children.

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