The Enforcement Directorate has called Chanda Kochhar for questioning on May 3 regarding loans of over £200 million given to Jaypee Group and Bhushan Steel during her tenure as ICICI Bank CEO. Top ICICI officials have submitted before ED details of loans given to some corporates - the loans have since turned bad - during her tenure. Her husband, Deepak Kochhar, and brother-in-law have been summoned on April 30 in connection with a money laundering probe. A prevention of money laundering act (PMLA) case was registered by ED last year based on a CBI FIR where the latter alleged that Kochhar had entered into a criminal conspiracy with other accused to cheat ICICI Bank by sanctioning loans of over £300 million to the Videocon group. Now, the ED probe has been extended to all loans to corporates by ICICI Bank during Chanda Kochhar’s tenure.
Jio pips Airtel as India’s No. 2 telco
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has overtaken Bharti Airtel's subscriber base to emerge as the second-largest telecom company in India. Jio, which has a customer base of 306 million, now trails only Vodafone-Idea. Airtel has 284 million subscribers while Vodafone-Idea had announced that it had 387 million subscribers in December 2018. A telecom industry analyst said that the pace of growth of Jio’s subscriber base may see the company overtake Vodafone-Idea in the coming quarters. For Sunil Mittal’s Airtel, which dominated the Indian telecom space for almost two decades, the fall has been dramatic – it used to be the market leader till the middle of last year before being edged out by the new entity that formed after the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular.
RBI sells entire stake in NHB, Nabard to govt
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has divested its entire stake held in National Housing Bank (NHB), the regulator for housing finance companies, and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) to the government, which now holds 100% in these entities. The transactions were completed on February 26 (Nabard) and March 19 (NHB). RBI had 100% shareholding in NHB, which was divested for £145 million. The Nabard stake was divested in two phases - RBI had 72.5% stake in Nabard amounting to £145 million, out of which 71.5%, worth £143 million was divested in October 2010 and the residual shareholding was divested on February 26 this year for £2 million.
Cars of Nirav Modi, Choksi receive bids of £3,29,000
An online auction of 13 luxury cars of fugitive diamond traders Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) received bids of £3,29,000, according to sources. The overall value of bids is over 9 per cent higher than the total base price of the cars fixed at £3,01,000.
The winning bid for Modi’s most expensive car, a Rolls-Royce Ghost model, was £1,33,100 - Rs 10,000 more than its base price fixed by the ED. The highest bids for Choksi’s two cars - a BMW X1 and a Toyota Innova Crysta - was Rs 11,75,000 and Rs 18,06,000 respectively, said sources. The ED will submit details of the sale process to the court and will also deposit the sale proceeds with a nationalised bank in a fixed deposit, as per the court’s order.
