Chanda Kochhar and husband Deepak worked in tandem, says ED
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has alleged that former ICICI Bank managing director Chanda Kochhar and her husband Deepak Kochhar, who was arrested on Monday night in connection with a money laundering probe, worked in tandem in a conspiracy to extend a loan to Videocon Group and then used an “elaborate structure/web of entities” for layering a bribe of Rs 64 crore.
Deepak Kochhar, according to the ED, not only actively engaged in laundering proceeds of crime and projecting it as “untainted,” but continued to have access to the laundered money. Interestingly, after Deepak Kochhar was arrested around 8.06 pm in ED’s Mumbai office, the agency informed Chanda Kochhar on telephone that her husband had been arrested.
In its remand document submitted in a Mumbai Prevention of Money Laundering Act Act (PMLA) court on Tuesday while seeking 14 days’ custody, the ED said that Deepak Kochhar’s arrest was “qualitatively more elicitation oriented” and absolutely necessary since he has been totally non-cooperative and needs to be taken to Delhi to be confronted with voluminous evidence so that the agency can decipher the complete money trail.
