01-05-2025
ECIL cheating case: Bail plea of private firm's CEO rejected
A special court in Mumbai on April 28 rejected the bail application of Prateek Kanakia, the CEO and founder of a Mumbai-based private firm, The Green Billions Limited (TGBL), arrested in a cheating case. His co-accused include former officials of the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), which comes under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in April had also arrested the then chairman and managing director (CMD) of BECIL, George Kuruvilla, and a former general manager, W B Prasad, along with a few others, for allegedly disbursing a venture loan of Rs 50 crore to TGBL, and obtaining an undue advantage of Rs 3 crore.
This was after the CBI received a complaint about a loan sanctioned to BECIL by the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency Limited of Rs 80 crore. It was alleged that BECIL further sanctioned Rs 50 crore of the loan amount to TGBL for a contract on waste management. The CBI alleged that public money was squandered in collusion with government officials by not utilising the loan amount for the sanctioned purpose.
The CBI also alleged that Kanakia submitted a fake performance bank guarantee to obtain the loan. The CBI submitted to the court that only Rs 1.39 crore of the loan amount has been returned so far.
Kanakia, while seeking bail, submitted that he was investigated in police custody, and now his further custodial interrogation is not required.
The court said that documents part of the probe shows some 'unholy confluence' between officers of BECIL and Kanakia and that public money was released to him without obtaining proper security. The court said the project file pertaining to the loan is missing from BECIL's office.
'This shows that there has been an attempt to conceal the evidence. Considering the circumstances, it cannot be said that the investigation qua the applicant/accused (Kanakia) is complete, rather it appears that the investigation is at a nascent stage, and the investigating agency is attempting to collect the documents, hard drives from the computers and recording statements to connect the pieces of evidence,' Special Judge A V Kharkar said in the order made available Thursday.
