CBI arrests Videocon Chairman Venugopal Dhoot in ICICI Bank fraud case

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Videocon Chairman Venugopal Dhoot in the ICICI bank fraud case on Monday. This comes just days after the agency arrested ICICI Bank’s former chief executive officer and managing director, Chanda Kochhar, and her husband, Deepak Kochhar on December 23.

The special CBI court remanded the couple on Saturday and revealed that Kochhar was helped by Dhoot to get the ownership of Nupower Renewables Ltd (NRL). NRL was incorporated on December 24, 2008, with Deepak Kochhar, Venugopal Dhoot, and Saurabh Dhoot as the first directors of the company.

Venugopal Dhoot and Saurabh Dhoot resigned from the directorship of the company in 2009. However, before resigning from the directorship, Venugopal Dhoot allotted 1,997,500 warrants to Deepak Kochhar at the rate of Rs 10 per warrant, on an initial payment of Rs 1 per warrant.

In 2009, the shares of NRL held by Venugopal Dhoot and Deepak Kochhar’s group Pacific Capital Services Pvt Ltd were transferred to SEPL, which became a 95 per cent shareholder of NRL.

Supreme Energy Pvt Ltd (SEPL) was incorporated in 2008 with Venugopal Dhoot (9,990 shares) and his associate Vasant Kakade (10 shares) as its first directors. Venugopal Dhoot resigned from the directorship of SEPL in 2009 and transferred control of the said company to Deepak Kochhar by transferring his shares to Pinnacle Energy Trust (PET), which was managed by Deepak Kochhar.

CBI has also alleged that when Chanda took charge of ICICI bank, six loans were wrongfully sanctioned to various companies of Videocon. The federal agency has further alleged that she influenced other committees to sanction loans to the Videocon group.

The agency had alleged cheating and irregularities in loans sanctioned by the bank to the Videocon group between 2009 and 2011 when Kochhar was heading the bank.