The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Rishi Kamlesh Agarwal, the founder of ABG Shipyard Limited, in connection with an alleged bank fraud of more than £2.28 billion, officials said.
The CBI had booked Agarwal, Santhanam Muthaswamy the then executive director, and Ashwini Kumar, Sushil Kumar Agarwal and Ravi Vimal Nevetia, directors on February 7.
Agarwal was called for questioning at the CBI headquarters during which the investigating officer suspected that he was not co-operating in the probe and was evasive in responses following which he was arrested, the officials said. The CBI registered the case on a complaint from the State Bank of India for the alleged offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, criminal breach of trust and abuse of official position under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Act. The ABG shipyard is a major player in Indian ship building industry operated from its shipyards located at Dahej and Surat in Gujarat with capacity to build vessels up to 18,000 dead weight tonnage (DWT) at Surat shipyard and 1,20,000 dead weight tonnage (DWT) at Dahej shipyard.
The company was in financial trouble following global slump in the shipping industry bringing irregularities in repayment schedule. "The cancellation of contracts for few ships and vessels resulted in piling up of inventory. This has resulted in paucity of working capital and caused significant increase in the operating cycle, thereby aggravating the liquidity problem and financial problem," the complaint from the SBI, now part of the FIR, has said.
In its complaint, the SBI said there was no demand of commercial vessels because of downturn in the industry even in 2015, which was further aggravated due to lack of defence orders making it difficult for the company to maintain repayment schedule.
