Searches were carried out by the CBI at eight locations in Mumbai and Pune at properties linked to a few builders in the DHFL-Yes Bank fraud case on Saturday. “Searches are going on at eight locations in Mumbai and Pune. Nothing can be said now about the role of people being searched,” one of the officials told news agency.
Properties linked to prominent builders Ashwini Bhonsale, Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka were reportedly searched. A report by news agency, quoting officials, said the CBI suspects that the companies of these builders were used to channel alleged illicit money in the fraud case.
Saturday’s raids come after the arrest of Mumbai -based realtor Sanjay Chhabria of Radius Developers, who is currently in the custody of the central agency till May 6.
Chhabria has been accused of diverting loans worth ₹3,094 crore that were sanctioned to his companies by Kapil Wadhwan of DHFL and Yes Bank, the CBI said on Friday.
“The custodial interrogation of Chhabria is necessary to ascertain the end-use of aforesaid loans aggregating to ₹3,094 crore, for the purpose of recovery of material evidence pertaining to the said transactions and related issues,” the central agency added and pointed out that the realtor had been “uncooperative” and was not coming out with facts relevant to the case.
Two years back the CBI had registered the case against Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor and DHFL’s Kapil Wadhwan.
It alleged that Kapoor entered into a criminal conspiracy with Wadhawan for extending financial assistance to DHFL through Yes Bank in return for substantial undue benefits to himself and his family through companies held by them.
The CBI’s FIR states that the fraud had started taking shape in 2018 from April-June when Yes Bank invested ₹3,700 crore in short-term debentures of DHFL.
In return, Kapil Wadhwan paid a kickback of ₹600 crore to Rana Kapoor and his family in the form of a loan to DoIT Urban Ventures (India) Pvt Ltd.