Kochhar forced Dhoot to transfer flat, says CBI

Deepak Kochhar coerced industrialist Venugopal Dhoot to transfer a flat at CCI Chambers in Mumbai's Churchgate to him by threatening that his wife Chanda Kochhar, then chief of ICICI Bank, would declare all loan accounts of the Videocon Group as non-performing assets, the Central Bureau of Investigation has said in its charge sheet.

- Charul Shah

The charge sheet, filed in the last week of March before a special court in Mumbai, also revealed that Dhoot warned Deepak Kochhar that the transfer would land his wife in trouble and she could end up sharing jail room with former INX Media CEO Indrani Mukerjea, who was then lodged in Byculla jail in connection with the murder of her daughter, Sheena Bora.

The federal agency initiated a probe into irregularities in the grant of ₹1,875 crore in loans to six companies of the Videocon Group when Chanda Kochhar was at the helm of affairs at the private bank. The loans were later restructured, and the total dues were shown to be ₹1,730 crore, out of which ₹1,033 crore was still outstanding when a first information report was registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act in January 2019.