MUMBAI: Kapil Wadhawan, erstwhile promoter of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL), a non-banking financial institution, ensured that his firm disbursed loans worth crores of rupees to city-based builder Sanjay Chhabria within a few minutes after receiving related requests without any documentation through online transfers at different points of time in 2018, said the CBI chargesheet against them filed in the court recently.
The CBI said that DHFL disbursed Rs 416 crore (of total over Rs 2,778 crore) to Chhabria Radius Group through the similar modus operandi at different times within a period of four months, in some cases the loan was disbursed on the next day of the application. It was further alleged that in all the instances (of Rs 416 crore loans) Radius Group kept the same 49 units of its ‘X BKC’ project at mortgage. The mortgaged 49 units offered to DHFL were ‘no unencumbered units’ and ‘the said 49 units simply did not exist.’, the CBI said.
It was further alleged that junior employees of DHFL also raised red-flags against the loan of Rs 2,700 crore to Radius group’s Santacruz project, ‘Avenue 54’ as they found the net cash flow (profits/surplus funds) from the project would only be Rs 1,945 crore. The CBI alleged that Radius group already had Rs 2,226 crore outstanding loans from Yes Bank, Indiabulls and others. But Kapil and Dheeraj ignored their company executives' warning and sanctioned the loans, the CBI chargesheet said.
The CBI further said that Rs 416 crore were sanctioned to Radius group without any appraisal, without any process note and without the matter being referred to the Finance Committee of DHFL.
CBI accused Chhabria of helping Kapil Wadhawan and his brother Dheeraj Wadhawan aka Baba Dewan for siphoning off Rs 4,733 crore from DHFL in guise of loans, which it received from Yes Bank as loans. CBI named Chhabariaa, the Wadhawan brothers and erstwhile founder of Yes Bank, Rana Kapoor, along with his family members as accused in the case.
The CBI said that Rana Kapoor sanctioned loans to DHFL after violating the banking norms in return of kickbacks. DHFL defaulted the payment. DHFL further transferred the money to Chhabariaa’s Radius group in the guise of loan. Chhabria defaulted on the DHFL loan payment. In return, Chhabria returned some of the money to the Wadhawan brothers through fictitious transactions.
The chargesheet said, “Evidence collected during investigation has established that accused Kapil Wadhawan had developed a practice in DHFL wherein he used to permit disbursement of loans or funds to several entities by according approval on mails, without any appraisal and credit process notes. In such cases, approvals for disbursements were conveyed by Kapil Wadhawan himself or from his office (CMD Office) and on such approvals funds were disbursed or released to the parties concerned by the junior officers in Project Finance Division. Some of such beneficiary concerns were associate concerns of DHFL.”
The CBI added that on January 18, 2018, a representative of Radius group, approached DHFL’s head of Project Finance Division, Rajendra Mirashie, seeking urgent sanction of Rs 180 crore as a mortgage loan against 49 units in the 'X BKC’ at Bandra after stating that Chhabria had already spoken to Kapil Wadhawan for the disbursement. It was allayed that Mirashie forwarded a related email request to Kapil Wadhawan for his approval for disbursement of Rs 80 crore at around 12.24pm on his official email ID. The CBI said that Kapil replied to the email after approving the request at 12.46 pm. Within 22 minutes of the communication, the DHFL disbursed Rs 80 crore through RTGS from its Axis Bank account without any further documentation to Radius group. On the same day, Chhabria Radius group diverted Rs 20 crore to Pune-based businessman Avinash Bhosale’s company, Nibodh Realty, the CBI has alleged. Recently, the CBI had arrested Bhosale in the case and it will file a separate chargesheet against him.
Referring to another transaction, it was alleged that on January 25, Radius group made another request of Rs 35 crore after mortgaging the same 49 units of ‘X BKC’ and within three minutes DHFL disbursed the loan through its Axis Bank account. After two months, on 29 March, Radius group again requested for additional disbursement of Rs 70 crores and after Kapil Wadhawan’s approval the amount disbursed within six minutes on the same day against the mortgage of the same 49 units of ‘X BKC’.
