NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate has arrested T Venkatram Reddy, a former promoter of the Deccan Chronicle Holdings Limited (DCHL), as part of a money laundering investigation linked to an alleged bank fraud case, official sources said on Tuesday.
Reddy was taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) by the federal agency's Hyderabad office, they said.
The agency had said in 2020 that its probe found that "the three promoters of DCHL namely P K Iyer, T Venkatram Reddy and T Vinayak Ravi Reddy hatched a well-planned conspiracy and manipulated the balance sheets of the company inflating the profits-advertisement revenue and grossly under-stated the financial liabilities of the company to paint a rosy picture for years to cheat the banks and its shareholders.
" The company, at that time, was stated to be under corporate insolvency resolution process. A resolution plan for only Rs 400 crore has been approved by the NCLT. The total loan fraud committed by DCHL and its promoters is estimated to be at Rs 8,180 crore, the agency had said.
The ED filed a PMLA case against the firm and its promoters in 2015 after studying a CBI FIR registered to investigate the alleged bank loan default.
The company had submitted false and fabricated balance sheets concealing its actual borrowings from Canara Bank’s corporate lending branch in Secunderabad, and from other banks; and had also alienated the security hypothecated/mortgaged to Canara Bank. The total loss allegedly caused to Canara Bank is to the extent of ‘357.77 crore (approx) as of 08.09.2012, as per the FIR by CBI in the case.