Rs 136 cr bank fraud case: CBI books Corporate Ispat Alloys and its directors

New Delhi: The CBI has registered a Rs 136 crore bank fraud case against Nagpur-based Corporate Ispat Alloys Limited (CIAL) in Kolkata, its Director Manoj Kumar Jayaswal and other senior officials of the company, alleging that they had got large amounts of term loans sanctioned from a consortium of banks including Punjab National Bank and then diverted the amount for their own use.

Officials here alleged that the company and its directors had with malafide intention defrauded the bank of the loan amount by dishonestly executing bogus transactions within the group's associate and subsidiary companies.

The CBI has said that CIAL had appointed one Abhijeet Projects Limited to carry out the construction of a coal processing and washing Plant at Chitrapur Coal Block in Jharkhand's Latehar district and paid them for the project duly. But the agency has alleged that Abhijeet Projects further invested the money in its own wholly-owned subsidiaries, which again sent a significant portion of it around to roughy 500 other companies, which in turn invested the money back into CIAL.

Moreover, the CBI has alleged that CIAL had brought in more than Rs 1500 crore from its holding company Abhijeet Ventures Limited by way of selling shares at exorbitant share premium rates. In fact, the agency has claimed that only 3.67 crore of this was from share capital and the rest Rs 1584.09 crore was earned from the share premium.The central probe agency has also alleged that CIAL had used its Axis Bank accounts for channelising various transactions worth approximately Rs 199.95 crore for purposes not related to its Coal Mining Project Division and that the volume of such transactions in comparison to the size of the project "prima facie indicates the malafide intention of the said company in transacting with its money which has been provided by the consortium banks by way of loan".