CBI Arrests Two RCOM Senior Officials In Bank 'Fraud' Case

New Delhi: The CBI on Monday said it has arrested two senior executives of Reliance Communications (RCOM), a company of the Anil Ambani group, in an alleged bank fraud case, the agency said on Monday. It identified the officials as RCOM Vice President Anil Kalya and Joint President D Vishwanath. The federal agency will seek a remand before a court.

The investigation pertains to RCOM, Anil Ambani and others, registered based on a complaint filed by the State Bank of India (SBI), with allegations that the bank sanctioned credit facilities to the company, but due to the accused borrowers' "fraudulent" activities, the lender suffered a wrongful loss of around Rs 2,929.05 crore.

According to the complaint, a wrongful loss of Rs 19,694 crore was caused to 17 public sector banks and financial institutions.

Investigation found that RCOM entered into "circuitous" transactions through "shell" entities controlled by company officials. Furthermore, the CBI said in a statement that RCOM obtained discounted Letters of Credit (LCs) opened for "bogus" service-related transactions with its group entities, which resulted in huge losses to the banks.

According to the agency, Vishwanath was in overall charge of the group's banking operations, and he directed the "misutilisation" of funds.

It said he coordinated with banks for the sanction and disbursal of the facilities to the accused company.

The probe agency said Kalya "actively" supported Vishwanath, adding that they were both "important" RCOM functionaries managing corporate finance, banking operations, payments and fund utilisation.

The agency, over the last few months, has registered seven cases against the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group based on complaints lodged by various public sector banks and LIC for alleged fraud totalling thousands of crores of rupees

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