ED arrests city bizman in ₹50-cr loan fraud

Kanakia was produced in a special court and remanded in the ED’s custody till Friday, agency sources said

MUMBAI: The Mumbai unit of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday arrested businessman Prateek Kanakia in connection with its money-laundering probe into a ₹50-crore loan disbursed by the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL) to Kanakia’s firm, The Green Billions Limited (TGBL), for executing a civic waste management project in Pune.

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Kanakia was produced in a special court and remanded in the ED’s custody till Friday, agency sources said.

The ED’s probe is based on a case registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on September 3, 2024. The CBI had registered a first information report in the case based on the findings of its preliminary enquiry (PE), initiated upon receipt of a complaint from vigilance authorities at the information and broadcasting ministry in New Delhi. BECIL, a central public sector enterprise, comes under the purview of the ministry.

According to the FIR, the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), a public sector company, had sanctioned a loan of ₹80 crore to BECIL for execution of projects in Pune related to waste management, LED smart lighting and smart metering. During its probe, the CBI found that in 2022, Kanakia, then chief executive officer of TGBL, former BECIL chairman and managing director George Kuruvilla and former BECIL general manager WB Prasad had hatched a criminal conspiracy and the ₹50 crore loan was disbursed to TGBL in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy.

Agency officials alleged that the case involved a bribe transaction of ₹3 crore. They also said the ₹50-crore loan was disbursed without genuine security and in violation of standard operating procedures. The loan was not utilised for the purpose it was sanctioned, neither was it returned to BECIL, causing BECIL a wrongful loss of ₹58 crore, the officials said.

Kanakia, Kuruvilla and Prasad were arrested by the CBI in April 2025, under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act. Earlier, in April 2025, the ED conducted searches at seven premises in Mumbai, one in Haryana’s Faridabad, as part of its money laundering probe into the case.