Videocon's Venugopal Dhoot was arrested by the CBI in bank fraud case. Dhoot later got bail.
NuPower Renewables, the company at the centre of the alleged Rs 3,250 crore loan scam involving ICICI Bank and Videocon, was set up and started functioning at the same office address as Supreme Energy, a company owned by Venugopal Dhoot, suggesting that he was associated with the Kochhars back in 2008.
The certificate of incorporation and the certificate for commencement of business of NuPower Renewables and Supreme Energy issued by the Maharashtra assistant registrar of companies, showed that both companies have the same address: Fort House, Second Floor, 221 Dr DN Road, Mumbai.
Moneycontrol has reviewed copies of the documents.
Dhoot, chairman of the Videocon Group, has on many occasions denied connections with the Kochhars and any wrongdoing. The Kochhars too denied wrongdoing in the alleged loan scam.
The Kochhars have been accused of wrongful gains from loans sanctioned to Videocon in 2012, when Chanda Kochhar was chief of ICICI Bank.
Same address, same owners
Supreme Energy was incorporated on June 26, 2008, about six months before NuPower was formed on December 18, 2008. The signatories of Supreme Energy were Dhoot and his associate Vasant Kakade. Dhoot owned a 99.9 percent stake in the company.
NuPower was started as an equal partnership by the Kochhar and Dhoot families. According to the memorandum of association and the articles of association of NuPower Renewables, the seven signatories were Dhoot, Saurabh Dhoot (son of Pradeepkumar Dhoot, brother of Venugopal Dhoot), Rajkumar Dhoot (brother of Dhoot), Mahesh Chandra Punglia (a former employee of Videocon), Deepak Kochhar (husband of Chanda Kochhar), Suresh Hegde (former finance director of Videocon) and Pacific Capital Services Pvt. Dhoot is listed as the first shareholder.
As highlighted in a Moneycontrol story on December 29, Pacific Capital was formed in 1999 with the Kochhar family members as shareholders.
According to the memorandum of association dated November 15, 1999, Pacific Capital was formed as an investment company with two founding shareholders, Virendra Kumar Kochhar and Vinodini Kochhar, both holding equal stakes. Virendra Kumar Kochhar and Vinodini Kochhar are the parents of Deepak Kochhar.
In short, the Kochhars controlled NuPower through a family holding company and the direct shareholding of Deepak Kochhar. The Dhoot family controlled the remaining half through three close relatives (Venugopal, Rajkumar and Saurabh) and two former employees.
In 2009, Dhoot resigned from directorship of Supreme Energy and transferred ownership to Deepak Kochhar-controlled Pinnacle Energy.
In March 2010, Dhoot invested Rs 64 crore through Supreme Energy in NuPower.
In simple words, Dhoot founded NuPower in his own office address, funded it and later handed over its ownership to Chanda Kochhar’s husband after securing a Rs 3,250 crore loan from ICICI Bank for his group.
Videocon Group companies received the ICICI Bank loans four years after the incorporation of Supreme Energy and NuPower Renewables. The companies that got the loans were Trend Electronics, Century Appliances, Kail, Value Industries, and Evans Fraser & Company India.
According to the letter sent by whistle-blower Arvind Gupta to the authorities in 2016, the sanctioning date of all these five loans was April 30, 2012, and the loan to each company was Rs 650 crore, taking the total to Rs 3,250 crore.
The loans were rolled into a consortium loan later, according to a senior official of a bank that was among the 20 in a lender group that advanced Rs 40,000 crore to Videocon.
Both Dhoot and Kochhar allegedly benefitted from the deal immensely.
Dhoot set up NuPower using his own office address and own funds and handed over the company to Deepak Kochhar after a short while.
Dhoot’s Videocon was overleveraged and looking for survival funds. The Rs 3250 crore loan from ICICI Bank came just in time.
Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Kochhar and Dhoot were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in December but subsequently got bail.
The bail was granted to the Kochhars earlier this month on technical grounds, with the court saying their arrest was not in accordance with the law.
In May 2018, ICICI Bank initiated an inquiry against Chanda Kochhar. She went on leave and then applied for early retirement, which was accepted.
The bank then said it had treated her separation as “termination for cause” and sought approval from the Reserve Bank of India for ending her appointment as was mandatory under the provisions of the RBI Act.
On November 10, 2022, the Bombay High Court said Kochhar's termination as CEO was prima facie a “valid termination” and dismissed her interim application seeking post-retirement benefits.
In its chargesheet filed in January 2019, the CBI said ICICI Bank, under Kochhar, sanctioned loans to Videocon in violation of credit policies. These loans later turned into non-performing assets, resulting in wrongful loss to the bank and wrongful gain to the borrower and the accused.
The CBI also sought a probe into the role of the senior officers of the sanctioning committee that approved the loans to Videocon. It said the credit limit for the Videocon Group companies was approved after Kochhar took over as CEO in May 2009.
