On Thursday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a charge sheet against Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor, his daughter Roshni Kapoor & promoters of Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) Kapil & Dheeraj Wadhawan alleging that the Kapoors & Wadhawans conspired with each other to siphon off public money & benefit themselves, two officials familiar with the development said.
CBI’s charge sheet comes just before the sixty-day deadline for filing a charge sheet from the date of arrest was to end. Wadhawans was arrested by the agency on April 26 from a Mahabaleshwar Govt facility after it was found that they had slipped out of Mumbai quietly with their whole family during the lockdown. Under the prevention of corruption act, CBI is supposed to file a charge sheet within sixty days of the arrest of an accused failing which the person is eligible for bail.
A senior CBI officer cited above said they will soon arrest Rana Kapoor & interrogate him. Wadhawans have already been questioned & are currently lodged in jail.
The agency’s first charge-sheet, officials said, focuses on the criminal conspiracy by Rana Kapoor in the investment of Rs 3,700 crore by Yes Bank in short term debentures of DHFL between April & June 2018, for which Kapil Wadhawan paid a kickback of Rs 600 crore to the Kapoor family in the garb of a loan of Rs 600 crore. This amount was given by Wadhawan to M/s M/s DOIT Urban Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of RAB Enterprises in which Roshni Kapoor is a director.
This money (Rs 600 crore), Central Bureau of Investigation has found, was given to DOIT on the basis of a mortgage of a sub-standard property having very meager value & by considering the future conversion from agricultural land to the residential land. The DHFL never repaid the bank’s Rs 3700 crore neither the bank asked.
Subsequently, Yes Bank also sanctioned a loan of Rs 750 crore to RKW Developers Pvt Ltd – a company belonging to Dheeraj Wadhawan for their Bandra reclamation project. The money reached the parent company DHFL without any investment in the said project.
CBI suspects that over hundred shell companies were used by the Kapoor family for diverting their ill-gotten wealth. The officers hinted that this is the first of many charge sheets which will be filed against the fraudsters.
Rana Kapoor’s counsel Subhash Jadhav & Wadhawans’ lawyer Amit Desai refused to comment.
Kapoor is first former MD-CEO of a private bank ever been charge-sheeted by both CBI & ED.
Earlier, while filing a charge sheet for money laundering against him on May 6, Enforcement Directorate had alleged that Rana Kapoor used the Yes Bank as his “personal fiefdom” to carry out illegal activities & was the architect of a financial fraud aimed at creating wealth for himself & his family.
The 62-year-old former banker has been accused of “impropriety, illegality & rampant misuse of power” in what the anti-money laundering probe agency described as the hallmark of a scam that had been brewing for many years.
Enforcement Directorate has alleged in its charge sheet that practices followed by the Yes Bank under Kapoor’s regime promoted a poor credit & compliance culture, centralization of power & lack of institutionalization, putting it in a situation where its survival came into question.
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