New Delhi: A new CBI charge sheet is going to deal with many senior bank officials who were involved in the loan lending to liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines as it will be filed within a month, according to the sources.
The charge sheet will be the first such that will deal with the case relating to loans of more than Rs. 6000 crore given to Kingfisher by a consortium of 17 banks with the biggest share given by the State Bank of India totaling Rs. 1600 crore.
The central agency has already filed such a charge sheet against the liquor baron last year regarding a separate case about an Rs. 900 crore pending loan issued by the IDBI bank in which many senior officials of the bank were involved as per the allegation.
As of now, the CBI had registered at least two cases against Vijaya Mallya in relation to the IDBI loans in the year 2015 and consortium loan in the year 2016.
The sources declined to give names of the senior bank officials and said that the first such probe into the loans given by a consortium of banks is almost complete by now and the charge sheet may be soon filed within a month along with the keeping of the investigation open.
They said that both kinds of officials may be named in the charge sheet, that is those who are serving in the State Bank of India currently and the retired ones. Whoever was involved from the bank officials in handing over the loans to Kingfisher Airlines will be named as accused in the charge sheet as the agency has gathered enough evidence against them by now over the misuse of official position.
According to the sources, the chief of Kingfisher airlines including Mallya, the company’s CFO A Raghunathan and other former senior executives will also be named as the accused ones in the case.
They further said that the central agency is also looking into whether any official from the Finance Ministry played a role to influence the decision of the bankers.
The agency has till now gathered enough evidence to show that Mallya allegedly diverted the loan funds acquired from the banks for other purposes, they said.
The CBI has alleged in its FIR that State Bank of India and all its consortium banks had given various credit facilities to Kingfisher Airlines Limited between the time period of 2005 and 2010, they said.
But during the period of 2009-10, the company did not meet its repayment commitments to the Bank and other consortium banks from which it had availed the credit facilities and Kingfisher Airlines did not keep its account with the consortium banks regularly which converted them into NPA, the FIR states.
It further alleged that the consortium banks recalled the credit facilities and also invoked corporate guarantee of UBHL and also the personal guarantee of Mallya, it alleged.
The sources further said that Mallya deliberately did not repay the amount taken from the consortium of banks.
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