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State Bank of India has constituted an internal committee comprising two senior Managing Directors — Hemant Contractor and A. Krishna Kumar — to investigate allegations of wrongdoing against its Deputy Managing Director Shyamal Acharya.
Acharya, who heads the mid-corporate group and has handled key loan accounts such as Kingfisher Airlines, has been asked to proceed on leave, a bank spokesperson said.
SBI constituted the committee following the Central Bureau of Investigation registering a case against the DMD for alleged graft in sanctioning a Rs 75-crore loan to a New Delhi-based private company. According to agency reports the private company in question is the Worlds Window Group, whose chairman is Piyoosh Goyal.
Besides Acharya, the agency has also registered a case against the chairman of the company; a former SBI Assistant General Manager (identified as K. K. Kumarah by agency reports), other officials of SBI and other unknown private persons.
Worlds Window
The Worlds Window group is a diversified company with business interests in ferrous and non-ferrous metal and scrap trading; manufacturing of aluminium composite panels; and logistics and mining.
The CBI, in a statement, said it has arrested the former SBI official in the alleged bribery case. “The Advisor of the said private company, who was earlier working as an AGM with SBI, approached Deputy Managing Director (DMD), SBI, Mumbai, for getting the said loan sanctioned. “The DMD allegedly influenced his office to process the loan application of the said private company and got the loan of Rs 75 crore sanctioned,” CBI said in its statement.
In the statement, the agency observed that after sanction of the loan, the chairman of the private company allegedly paid Rs 25 lakh to his Advisor (former SBI official) as reward and also paid Rs 15 lakh to him for giving it to the SBI DMD as reward.
After receipt of Rs 15 lakh, the Advisor allegedly purchased one Rolex and one Omega wrist watch worth about Rs 7.75 lakh and visited the office of the SBI DMD at Mumbai and delivered the watches to him.
After delivery of the said wrist watches, the Advisor was apprehended by the CBI and the said two wrist watches were also recovered from the office cabin of the DMD, the CBI statement said.
Searches were conducted at the residential and office premises of the accused persons, the agency said.
Acharya could not be reached for his comments.
In a statement, Worlds Window Group said “We are concerned with the news appearing in the media and we are shocked that our name is appearing in the same. We have not paid any bribe to anybody to secure any facility.
“We are currently seeking legal advice and at an appropriate time our lawyers will clarify our position.”
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