New Delhi: A PMLA court in Mumbai granted bail to YES Bank founder and former managing director Rana Kapoor in Avantha case.
Gautam Thapar, Avantha group’s promoter and co-accused in the case, also got bail. But Thapar will continue to remain in custody as there are several charges of money laundering against him.
The CBI had registered a case of cheating and criminal conspiracy against Avantha Group and its promoter Gautam Thapar for an alleged loan fraud of Rs 466 crore on YES Bank.
The case pertains to a loan extended to Avantha Realty when Rana Kapoor was the MD and CEO of the bank as well as the head of the loan credit committee. According to the ED, Kapoor connived with Thapar and extended a loan to the company and in return, obtained a prime location property in Delhi at almost half its market price for him and his family members, according to a report in PTI.
Last month, the trial court had denied bail to Kapoor, noting that the against him were most grave and serious in nature.
The trial court had, however, granted bail to 15 other accused – B Hariharan, Abishek S Pandey, Rajendra Kumar Mangal, Raghubir Kumar Sharma, Anil Bhargava, Tapsi Mahajan, Surendra Kumar Khandelwal, Sonu Chadha, Harsh Gupta, Ramesh Sharma, Pawan Kumar Agarwal, Amit Mamtani, Ashish Agarwal, Amit Kumar, and Vinod Bahety in the case.
Kapoor had moved the bail application before the trial court after he was summoned by the court which took cognisance of a charge sheet filed by the ED.
The application was opposed by the ED on the grounds that Kapoor was instrumental in the generation of the proceeds of crime.
The court had, in October last year, taken cognizance of the ED’s prosecution complaint, an equivalent of a charge sheet, against the accused persons in the case, saying there were sufficient grounds to proceed against them.
According to the ED, the case was registered against Gautam Thapar, Avantha Realty (ARL), Oyster Buildwell (OBPL), and others alleging criminal breach of trust, cheating, criminal conspiracy, and forgery for diversion or misappropriation of public money during the period 2017 to 2019.
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