CBI questions Nupower’s former director Nayak
NEWDELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday questioned Umanath Vaikunt Nayak, a former director of Deepak Kochhar’s Nupower Renewables Pvt Ltd.
Kochhar, husband of ICICI Bank managing director and chief executive officer Chanda Kochhar, is under the CBI scanner for allegedly receiving a payment of ₹64 crore for Nupower through a circuitous route as an alleged quid pro quo for a loan of ₹3,250 crore given by the bank to the Venugopal Dhoot-promoted Videocon Group.
The CBI has registered a preliminary enquiry (PE) against Deepak Kochhar, Dhoot, unknown officials of ICICI Bank and other unknown persons to see whether the transactions between Dhoot, Kochhar and their companies amount to a criminal act.
“Nayak is former director of Nupower Renewables and now a director of Kochhar’s another company Nupower Wind Farms. He is associated with many companies of Deepak Kochhar,” said a CBI official familiar with the matter.
Ministry of corporate affairs data shows Nayak is also a director of Supreme Energy Pvt Ltd. According to the CBI’S PE, Supreme Energy was once owned by Dhoot. It is also alleged that Dhoot later transferred his shareholding in Supreme Energy to an alleged close aide Mahesh Chandra Punglia, who further sold the stake to a trust where Deepak Kochhar was managing trustee.
Punglia is now a director of Nupower Renewables, shows the corporate affairs ministry’s data. Punglia was also questioned by the CBI on Sunday for the second day.
The CBI’S questioning of Punglia centered around the circumstances in which Supreme Energy changed hands and the loan of ₹64 crore it advanced to Nupower Renewables, investigators probing the matter said.
Besides Nayak and Punglia, the CBI continued with its ques- tioning of Deepak Kochhar’s brother Rajiv Kochhar for the fifth day on Sunday.
“Rajiv Kochhar and Punglia reached the CBI office in Mumbai first and almost two hours later Nayak too was asked to join the probe,” said the Central Bureau of Investigation official quoted above.
An email to Nupower remained unanswered. Venugopal Dhoot declined to comment.
ICICI Bank has repeatedly maintained that it gave a loan of ₹3,250 crore to Videocon Group as part of a consortium of around 20 banks and financial institutions and there was no violations of any norms. The consortium had provided credit facilities of around ₹40,000 crore to Videocon Group. MUMBAI: The maker of Cello pens has moved the Bombay high court against the company’s previous owners allegedly violating a no-compete agreement and venturing into the stationery business. French stationery maker Bic Clichy bought a 40% stake in Cello Writing Instruments for ₹750 crore from Mumbai-based Rathod family in 2009. The stake was raised to 75% in 2014, and further to 100% in 2015.
The sale agreement included a clause that prevented its former promoters from entering the stationery business for 36 months.
However, in its petition, Bic said close relatives of the Rathods and a former executive started the Unimax stationery brand in 2016, breaching the non-compete clause. Bic group also claims Unimax products are deceptively similar to Cello pens. The firm has sought the court’s intervention to stop Unimax from being in a competing business, apart from damages of ₹84 crore from the Rathods.
The Bic petition said Unimax promoters Chandu Shah and Satyajit Chatterjee are closely linked to the Rathods. Shah is the brother-in-law of Pradeep Rathod (a former Cello promoter), while Chatterjee held a senior position at Cello’s export operations, and had access to overseas agents, distributors and customers.