New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday arrested Anil Khandelwal, Chief Financial Officer of global tours and travel company Cox and Kings Group (CKG) in connection with the Yes Bank money laundering probe, the agency said in a statement. Besides Khandelwal, the agency also arrested Naresh Jain, the group's internal auditor. The arrests have been made under section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA). Both the accused were produced before the Special Judge (PMLA) and were granted seven days of ED custody.
Khandelwal and Jain allegedly created disparities in the books of the outbound travel firm between FY2015 and FY2019.
Cox & Kings, which is going through corporate insolvency resolution, was among the top borrowers from Yes Bank. ED's investigation allegedly revealed that Cox and Kings, to get loans, forged its consolidated financials by manipulating the balance sheets of its overseas subsidiaries. The board resolution submitted to the bank for sanctioning of credit was allegedly forged.
The ED had claimed that the firm defaulted on loan payments worth Rs 3,642 crore.
Earlier this year, the ED conducted raids at premises belonging to the senior management of Cox and Kings Group (CKG) in connection with the money laundering probe.
On March 8, the agency arrested the bank's former chairman and managing director Rana Kapoor. The travel company was sent to bankruptcy court last year in October after defaulting on payments to the bank. The ED had been scanning its transactions to its borrowers.
"Further investigation revealed that the loan sanction from Yes bank was driven by Kapoor and was given bypassing the norms.
The ED gathered the evidence regarding Kapoor's direction to the concerned bank officials to get the said loan continued and not to take efforts to recover it," the agency statement noted. As per the investigation, sales worth Rs 3,908 crore was made to 15 non-existent/fictitious customers during the financial years (FY) 2015 to 2019. Majority of the collection shown in ledgers from Ezeego (another group entity of CKG) was not found in the bank statements.
It was also found that 15 fictitious high-value debtors reflected in the books of accounts. Another 147 sets of customers also appeared to be suspicious and not existent. The agency alleged that Cox and Kings diverted Rs 1,100 crore to another stressed company with which had no business relationship.With agency inputs