New Delhi: Deepak Kochhar, the husband of Chanda Kochhar, former CEO and CEO of ICICI Bank, who has recently been arrested in connection with the ICICI Bank-Videocon case, tested positive for Covid-19.
He has been admitted to AIIMS, Delhi. Deepak Kochhar was recently brought to Delhi from Mumbai by a team from the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in a money laundering case, he met his lawyer Vijay Aggarwal at the Khan Market headquarters here on the instructions of the court.
A Mumbai court had sent Deepak Kochhar into ED custody until September 19 in connection with the money laundering case related to the alleged misappropriation of ICICI Bank loans to Videocon. However, he was also allowed to have several meetings with his lawyer.
Lawyer Vijay Aggarwal had met with Deepak Kochhar in Delhi on September 10 to obtain legal guidance on the matter and is scheduled to meet with him again on Monday.
The ER team had taken him to Delhi to confront him with voluminous documents and other materials collected during raids on his office.
Additional Attorney General Anil Singh and Attorney Naveen Kumar Matta, representing the DE, had alleged that during the course of the investigation, Deepak had remained evasive and uncooperative.
“For the same reason, the investigation into certain crucial aspects of the case is still ongoing. Deepak Kochhar has deliberately failed to provide crucial documents / leads and has taken conflicting positions with the records, under one pretext or another, deliberately misleading the DE”, the lawyers had filed with the court.
Deepak Kochhar’s position on certain crucial aspects is contrary to the records in the case, despite being given ample opportunity to refute the same, the lawyer said, adding that he also intentionally concealed information that was in his exclusive knowledge.
The ED has also said that there was material in possession and reason to believe that Deepak Kochhar is guilty of money laundering offenses as defined in the sections of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
The economic crime watchdog had said that Deepak Kochhar is involved in laundering the proceeds of crime and has been involved in projecting the proceeds of crime as uncontaminated.
He said that he directly tried to please, knowingly to help, is knowingly a party and in fact involved in a process or activity related to the proceeds of crime and projecting it as uncontaminated property.
In fact, he owns and continues to enjoy the proceeds of crime generated by criminal activity related to the scheduled crimes in this case, the ED had said.
ED initiated an investigation after filing a case under PMLA on the basis of FIR for sanctioning illegal loans in the amount of ₹Rs 1,875 million to the Videocon group of companies.
“The investigation revealed that ₹64 crore, from the loan of ₹Rs 300 million sanctioned by a committee headed by Chanda Kochhar to Videocon International Electronics Limited, were transferred to NuPower Renewables Pvt Ltd (NRPL, formerly known as NuPower Renewables Limited, a company of Deepak Kochhar, Chanda Kochhar’s husband) by VIL on 8 of September. 2009, just one day after the loan was disbursed by ICICI Bank, “the ED had previously said.
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