Monday, June 13, 2011

HC Asks CBI to Investigate Bank-Mafia Nexus






Source :Outlook :PTI:Newdelhi:june 5,2011


The Delhi High Court has asked CBI to inquire and respond to a plea alleging conspiracy by officials of the State Bank of India and Standard Chartered Bank in the sale of non-performing assets at throw-away prices to "builder mafias".

Justice Mukta Gupta issued a notice asking the CBI to respond within four weeks, Rohit P Ranjan, counsel for a director of a private firm, said.

Saroj Kumar Bagaria, a Delhi-based businessman and director of M/s Vishal Global Ltd , in his petition said that the firm had been granted a credit facility of Rs 5 crore in 1999 and pledged his property as security with SBI.

As the firm suffered losses and could not repay the loan, some officials of SBI and SCB conspired and sold its alleged "bad debt", declared as non-performing asset (NPA), to "builder mafia" at cheap price.

Terming it as conspiracy, Bagaria has sought the court's directions to CBI and the Bank Securities and Fraud Cell to register an FIR on the basis of his complaint, lodged in 2010.

"Erring persons (builder mafias) conspired with officials of SBI and the SCB to buy such loans (secured by properties) at price of peanuts and cause huge wrongful loss to the SBI and its borrowers and huge wrongful gains to themselves as well as SCB," the petition said.

"It is submitted that since the loans were duly secured by properties having high value and the SBI already had a decree for sale of properties from the Debt Recovery Tribunal, there was no need and occasion for the SBI to sell these debts to private banks," it said.

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