ED starts probe into Kanishk Gold bank fraud

Chennai March 23 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has launched an investigation into the Rs 824.15-crore bank fraud involving Kanishk Gold Pvt Ltd and searches are being conducted at the premises of company staffers an ED official said.

"We have started investigation in the Kanishk Gold case and searches are being conducted in the premises belonging to the company officials " the ED official told IANS.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against the city based Kanishk Gold accusing it of defrauding a consortium of 14 banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI).

The jewellery company had taken a loan of Rs 824.15 crore from the consortium and the loan account has turned bad.

The SBI which tops the list with Rs 240 crore of loans is followed by Punjab National Bank (PNB) (Rs 128 crore) Bank of India (Rs 46 crore) IDBI (Rs 49 crore) Syndicate Bank (Rs 54 crore) Union Bank (Rs 53 crore) UCO Bank (Rs 45 crore) Central Bank (Rs 22 crore) Corporation Bank (Rs 23 crore) Bank of Baroda (Rs 32 crore) Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank (Rs 27 crore) HDFC (Rs 27 crore) ICICI Bank (Rs 27 crore) and Andhra Bank (Rs 32 crore).

The CBI had questioned company Directors Bhoopesh Kumar Jain and Neeta Jain in Bengaluru on Thursday.

--IANS
vj/nir/vm