Yes Bank scam: CBI court sends Rana Kapoor's wife, daughters to judicial custody

A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court here Saturday rejected the bail pleas of family members of jailed banker Rana Kapoor, arrested in connection with the alleged fraud caused to the Yes Bank Ltd (YBL). The court remanded his wife, Bindu and daughters Roshini and Radha Kapoor-Khanna to judicial custody.
Observing that the trio are involved in the wrongful loss of public money to the tune of Rs 4,000 crores which belongs to public at large including poor bank depositors and shareholders, judge SU Wadgaonkar opined, “...considering the gravity and nature of offence and in the larger interest of society, as accused/applicants involved in causing wrongful loss to the huge public money of Rs.4,000 crores. Accordingly, applicants (bail plea) deserve to be rejected”.

The trio will be lodged at Mumbai’s Byculla district jail which is meant for female undertrials and convicts.

The court further observed that the accused show complicity with co-accused Rana Kapoor and are the beneficiary of the amount fraudulently and dishonestly obtained by Kapoor. “... they have received fraudulently and dishonestly the illegal amount pending to be a corporate loan of Rs 300 crore, Rs 300 crores and Rs 600 crores, so actual beneficiary of the said amount,” the order accessed by ET states.

The court also rejected the defence counsel, advocate Vijay Aggarwal’s contention that bail should be granted on the ground that they are women. “..applicants involved in grave offence affecting the economy of the country and are continue to reap the benefits of the crime committed by them, do not deserve any indulgence and any sympathy to them being women or mother of small kids

Last month, the CBI had filed a supplementary chargesheet against Kapoor, his family members and four former junior employees of the bank in connection with the corruption case, which pertains to the loans given to the now bankrupt financial firm DHFL. The accused were summoned and the hearing in the matter was scheduled for Saturday.

According to the CBI’s first chargesheet filed last year, in June 2018, Kapoor, then the head of Yes Bank’s management credit committee, sanctioned a loan of Rs 750 crore on an application by DHFL promoters, Dheeraj Wadhawan and his brother Kapil Wadhawan, in the name of Belief Realtors Pvt Ltd for development of a Bandra Reclamation Project. This amount was advanced to RKW Developers, a company controlled by Dheeraj Wadhawan although the bank’s risk management team had pointed out multiple and serious issues in the proposal.

The agency’s probe revealed that the loan of Rs 750 crore was not utilised for the stated purpose.

Simultaneously, Kapil Wadhawan is said to have paid a kickback of Rs 600 crore to Kapoor and his family members in the garb of a builder loan from DHFL to DOIT Urban Ventures (India) Private Ltd (DUVPL). Roshini Kapoor, the youngest daughter of Rana Kapoor, is one of the directors of DUVPL.

After deducting a processing fee, an amount of Rs 632 crore was transferred to RKW Developers. This amount was then routed to other entities controlled by the Wadhawans—KYTAAdvisors and RIP Developers—to settle a loan obtained from DHFL for the same Bandra Reclamation Project in November 2015.