ED Arrests CFO, Internal Auditor of Cox and Kings under PMLA in Yes Bank Case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested CFO and Internal Auditor of Cox and Kings Group (CKG) under Section 19 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) for the offence of money laundering in connection with Yes Bank case.

Both the accused, CFO Anil Khandelwal, and Internal Auditor Naresh Jain, were produced before the Special Judge (PMLA) and granted seven days of ED custody.

During PMLA investigation, it surfaced that Yes Bank has total outstanding of Rs 3,642 crores in respect of CKG.

Further investigation revealed that CKG forged its consolidated financials by manipulating the balance sheets of overseas subsidiaries. In addition, some board resolutions submitted to banks for sanctioning the loans were also found to be forged. Further investigation revealed that the loan sanction from Yes bank was driven by then CMD Rana Kapoor and was given bypassing the norms.

ED gathered the evidence regarding clear instruction of Kapoor to the concerned bank officials to get the said loan continued and not to take efforts to recover it.

The investigation also revealed that, during FY 2015 to FY 2019, sales of Rs 3,908 crores was made to 15 non-existent/fictitious customers.

Also, there are fictitious 15 high-value debtors reflected in the books of accounts. Another 147 sets of customers also appeared to be suspicious and not existent. The Cox and King Limited (CKL) has diverted Rs 1,100 crores to another stressed company without any approval of board which has no business relationship with the company.

During the whole process, Khandelwal and Jain acquired the mortgaged property amounting to Rs 63 crores in their owned business entity M/s Reward Business Solutions without paying anything from their pockets.

Investigations further revealed that the duo purchased various immovable properties from the funds diverted from CKG.

It was also revealed that Rs 150 crores were diverted from Ezeego, from another group entity of CKG, to a private limited company which was promoted by Khandelwal and Jain's family members.

"Investigation conducted so far has revealed that the bank transactions of Cox and King Group are not matching with the books of accounts and Anil Khandelwal and Naresh Jain creating disparities between the books of accounts and the bank statements to camouflage the fraud," the statement said.