Money laundering: Court rejects Deepak Kochhar's bail plea

Mumbai: A special court here on Thursday rejected the default bail plea of businessman Deepak Kochhar, husband of former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar and an accused in money laundering case. Deepak Kochhar was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in September under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the ICICI Bank-Videocon money laundering case.

The businessman, through his lawyer, applied for bail on merits as well as on account of default, claiming the prosecution has failed to file a charge-sheet in the case within stipulated period.

The special PMLA judge rejected his default bail plea, while the one filed on merits is posted for hearing on November 23, ED's lawyer HitenVenegaokar said. Responding to Kochhar's claim that the probe agency had failed to file the charge-sheet on time, the prosecution had submitted that the same was filed on November 3, but it is pending scrutiny by the concerned department, as there are five trunks full of documents that needed to be verified.

Thus, the court is yet to take the cognisance of the prosecution's complaint. The ED had arrested Deepak Kochhar in September after it filed a criminal case of money laundering after studying an FIR registered by the CBI against the Kochhars, Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot and others.

The central probe agency slapped money laundering charges against the Kochhars and their business entities for "illegal sanctioning of loans amounting to Rs 1,875 crore to the Videocon Group of companies".