ED chargesheets Kapoor family in YES Bank money laundering case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday filed its first charge sheet in the YES Bank money laundering case, naming its co-founder and former chief executive Rana Kapoor, his wife and three daughters, and three companies linked to his family.

The agency has estimated the size of fraudulent deals at Rs 5,050 crore, and accused the Kapoor family of receiving Rs 600 crore as kickbacks in return for YES Bank extending questionable loans.

In the charge sheet submitted to a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Mumbai, ED also accused YES Capital, Morgan Credits and RAB Enterprises of money laundering and receiving personal gratification in lieu of loans to borrowers.

After YES Bank failed to raise enough money to stay afloat, the Reserve Bank of India seized the lender on March 5; ED arrested Kapoor three days later, suspecting irregularities in loans granted to Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL). On March 13, RBI got a clutch of public and private sector banks to rescue the private lender.

During its investigation, ED found that YES Bank had lent Rs 3,700 crore to DHFL against debentures issued by the company in April-June 2018; simultaneously, DHFL sanctioned a loan worth ₹600 crore to Doit Urban Ventures (India), a company fully-owned by Kapoor’s three daughters—Roshini, Radha and Raakhee—through Morgan Credits.

DHFL is yet to repay the loan, and according to ED, the Rs 600 crore loan to Doit was a kickback to the Kapoor family in lieu of loans from YES Bank. Further, YES Bank lent to Doit against a collateral of five properties whose market value was inflated from about Rs 40 crore to Rs 735 crore to justify the loans, the charge sheet said. “This was agricultural land and the value was inflated. We will also uncover more financial irregularities in subsequent (supplementary) chargesheets,” an ED official said on condition of anonymity. ED has so far scanned 100 entities which it suspects are shell structures.