Yes Bank-DHFL fraud case: CBI raids underway in Mumbai, Pune

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is conducting searches on the premises linked to Pune-based businessman Avinash Bhosale and Mumbai-based realtors- Vinod Goenka and Shahid Balwa in connection with its probe in the Yes bank-DHFL fraud case, sources in the know told ET.

These sources added that searches were underway at eight locations in Mumbai and Pune. The raids come days after the federal agency arrested another city-based realtor Sanjay Chhabriaa in the said matter.

On Friday while seeking Chhabriaa remand, CBI told a special court here that he had alleged misappropriated more than Rs 3,000 crore in the said case.


The court has remanded Chhabriaa in CBI custody till May 6.

Chhabriaa is the managing director of Radius group, one of the biggest borrowers from bankrupt housing finance company DHFL, with an outstanding loan and interest component of around Rs 3,000 crore for a residential project in suburban Mumbai, a joint venture between Radius and Sumer Group.

DHFL is one of the defaulters of Yes Bank.

DHFL’s promoters, Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan, are currently in jail in connection with cases registered by the CBI and the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) over the alleged fraud caused to Yes Bank in connivance with the bank's co-founder Rana Kapoor, who is lodged at Taloja jail on the outskirts of Mumbai.

The agency told the court that its investigation had revealed that immediately after Yes Bank invested Rs 2,700 crore in non-convertible debentures (NCDs) of DHFL in June 2018, the housing finance company appraised and sanctioned loans of Rs 1,100 crore and Rs 900 crore to Radius Estate Projects Pvt Ltd (REPL) and Sumer Radius Realty Pvt Ltd (SRPL), two companies controlled by Chhabriaa.

In February, the federal investigative agency raided premises linked to the Radius group and questioned Chhabriaa.

According to the CBI’s first chargesheet filed last year, in June 2018, Kapoor, the then head of Yes Bank’s management credit committee, sanctioned a loan of Rs 750 crore on an application by Dheeraj Wadhawan and his brother Kapil, in the name of Belief Realtors Pvt Ltd, for a reclamation project in Bandra.

“It was also revealed that pursuant to the sanction of the loan of Rs 750 crore by Yes Bank Ltd to Belief Realtors Pvt Ltd (BRPL), an amount of Rs 632 crore was diverted by the said BRPL to the accounts of DHFL and a major part of said amount was thereafter transferred by DHFL to Flag Industries India Pvt Ltd and other companies owned by Chhabriaa on September 28, 2018,” the agency said in its remand application seeking Chhabriaa’s custody.

“The custodial interrogation is necessary to ascertain the end use of aforesaid loans aggregating to Rs 3,094 crore,” the application read.

In September last year, Piramal Capital and Housing Finance (PCHF) completed the acquisition of DHFL for Rs 34,250 crore, which included a cash component and non-convertible debentures.