Monday, December 2, 2013

CBI finds haul of gold, 40 scotch bottles in SBI DMD’s house

Gold and jewellery worth Rs 67 lakh, forty bottles of scotch, and documents showing benami purchase of 10 kilogram of gold were found by the Central Bureau of Investigation at the Napean Sea road residence of deputy managing director of State Bank of India Shyamal Acharya, who was booked on Saturday on charges of bribery.

Acharya will be asked to explain the source of income for these purchases. Even the scotch will be accounted for while determining his wealth, said sources. “In case he is unable to account for these items, we will register a fresh case of corruption against him for amassing wealth more than his known sources of income,” CBI sources said. They remarked that Acharya had a large quantity of gold coins in his house. The agency will conduct a search of Acharya’s personal bank locker on Tuesday.

CBI has also sealed two offices of a jeweler Amrut Jain - one at Zaveri Bazar and another in central Mumbai - through whom Acharya is suspected to have invested in 10 kilos of gold. The agency had summoned Jain for interrogation, but he has evaded them so far, sources said.

SBI has instituted an internal probe into the matter and has asked Acharya to proceed on leave, pending investigation.


Acharya, a DMD at SBI and Head of Mid-Corporate division, was booked along with Piyoosh Goyal, managing director of Delhi-based Worlds Window Impex India Limited on bribery charges after the CBI conducted a raid on Acharya’s residence and seized an imported pair of watches worth Rs 8 lakh.

It was Goyal who had allegedly gifted Acharya the watchestogethiscreditlimitfromthebankincreased.KK Kumra, a former SBI Assistant General Manager, who was working as a liason agent for Worlds Window and who haddeliveredthewatches,hasbeenarrestedandisnowin CBI custody.

Worlds Window had been allegedly planning to pay Rs. 15 lakh as bribe to Acharya; while Rs 8 lakh was accounted for by the watches, the remaining Rs 7 lakh was found by the CBI at K K Kumra’s residence on Saturday.

Worlds Window is an industrial group which imports ferrous and non-ferrous metal scrap, manufactures aluminium composite panels (ACP) and runs India’s biggest private inland container depots. It has a credit limit of Rs 250 crore with a consortium of banks including SBI. The bribehadbeenpaidtoraisethecaptoRs.400croretofund the company’s ongoing expansion plans. SBI’s contribution to the increased credit was to be Rs 75 crore.

CBI has alleged that Shyamal Acharya, who was originally not in charge of sanctioning the loan, got the case moved under his charge. In this peculiar bribery case, the complaint was not lodged by Worlds Window, but was registered on the basis of surveillance by CBI on Acharya over the past few weeks.
Courtesy:
Abhijit Sathe @timesgroup.com TWEETS@abhijit_sathe
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=MIRRORNEW&BaseHref=MMIR/2013/11/26&PageLabel=10&EntityId=Ar01001&ViewMode=HTML

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