Chanda Kochhar says she had not sanctioned any Videocon loan independently

The former MD and CEO of ICICI Bank has said that two of the six loans given to Videocon group — currently under the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigation for alleged corruption — were approved before her appointment at the top post.

Further, she mentioned that she was just one of 31 top executives who were part of credit approval committees that sanctioned high-value loans to the beleaguered group from 2009 to 2018.

In a statement before the ED adjudicating authority, the troubled banker defended allegations of ‘quid pro quo’ over loans approved by the bank when she was the head of ICICI Bank, mentioning that the loans were standard performing assets till early 2017.

During the entire period of association with Videocon Group, ICICI Bank has earned a high amount of fee and interest till 2016. The loans were standard performing assets till early 2017, which is when the entire exposure of the entire banking system to Videocon was declared NPA.

In September 2020 ED had arrested Deepak Kochhar, husband of Chanda Kochhar, in connection with ICICI Bank-Videocon money laundering case, and it was the first arrest since the case was registered in February 2019. In October 2018, Chanda Kochhar had quit the bank after being mired in allegations that she favoured Videocon Group.

Asserting that the loans were approved as part of the bank’s ordinary course of business, she explained the roles of six senior bankers named in the FIR.

She said that the FIR also contains the names of other senior personnel who participated in the committees that sanctioned the said six loans. These senior people are no pushovers and hence the committees would have rejected and not recommended the proposal if it was not as per merits.

Last week, the adjudicating authority said that probing agencies had failed to quiz these senior officials. The order came while dismissing the ED’s plea seeking attachment of the assets of Kochchar and her arrested husband Deepak Kochhar—worth Rs 78.15 crore—seized by it in January.

Adjudicating Authority concluded in its order that the senior officials – Sandeep Bakshi, K Ramkumar, Sonjoy Chatterjee, N S Kannan, Zarin Daruwala, Rajiv Sabharwal, K V Kamath and Homi Khusrokhan – though known and identified, were neither interrogated for the alleged scheduled offences by CBI nor interrogation, if any, revealed by the CBI or the ED.

The adjudicating authority also found Kochhar’s argument valid that a rupee term loan of Rs 300 crore had not turned into a bad loan. The investigating agencies examining allegations of quid pro quo and money laundering primarily focussed on this loan.

She said she had no involvement in the origination, processing, or the detailed due diligence carried out by various departments of these loans. She had not approved any of these loans independently. Even as the MD & CEO she did not have any veto power in any committee.