Unsecured loans amounting to Rs. 416 crore were sanctioned by Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL) developer Kapil Wadhawan over concerns of builder Sanjay Chhabria’s Radius Group for a period of four months in 2018 after that Yes Bank has invested in DHL. Some of these approvals came via emails from Kapil Wadhawan to his team in as little as 22 minutes and 6 minutes after she passed on the loan proposals to him.

The Central Bureau of Investigation makes this clear in its supplemental indictment filed in a special court last month in which it claims Chhabria conspired with a co-defendant to misappropriate funds that DHFL received in the form of loans from Yes Bank. Chhabria was arrested on April 28. He and his five companies have been added to the list of 20 defendants in the case, which includes Yes Bank founder and former CEO and MD Rana Kapoor, his family members and DHFL’s Wadhawan brothers Kapil and Dheeraj.

The roadmap says the investigation revealed that investments made by Yes Bank in DHFL bonds were intimately linked to loans made by DHFL to Radius Group companies in Chhabria. Loans of around Rs. 3,094 crores were sanctioned by DHLL to Chhabria businesses soon after the bank’s investment was received.

The investments were authorized by Kapil through letters to his team and the agency’s investigation revealed that Kapil Wadhawan had developed a practice in DHFL in which he used to allow the disbursement of loans or funds to multiple entities by granting approval on couriers, without any assessment.

Of the 416 crores, the invoicing sheet shows that Rs. 80 crores was approved by Kapil within 22 minutes of receiving a letter from his team about it. The amount was disbursed the same day without further approval, he said. In another case, Rs. 70 crore was approved by Kapil within six minutes of receiving the mail. In this way, he said, 416 crore was sanctioned to Radius Group companies without any assessment. 49 units of a BKC project were offered by Radius Group companies to DHL for these loans in the form of mortgages. The invoice says a Radius Group employee said these units were already mortgaged to other lenders and therefore “just didn’t exist.”

Subsequently, he said, when DHFL officers sued the Radius Group for repayment of the loans, Chhabaria refused to provide a mortgage or repay the loans and argued that the Wadhawan brothers owed him more than Rs. 250 crore. The indictment says the head of DHFL’s project finance division raised the matter with Kapil Wadhawan, who did not deny Chhabria’s claim. In 2019, Dheeraj Wadhawan offered a property belonging to his company M/s RKW Developers Pvt. ltd. for loans granted by Radius Group. Two other business properties owned by him were also offered as collateral.

Accused builder offers to deposit Rs. 4 Cr in Yes Bank account

On Thursday, builder Satyan Tandon, who was arrested in the case last month, pleaded before a special CBI court asking for bank details of Yes Bank to deposit Rs. 4 cr into it. The court allowed the same noting that Yes Bank is ultimately the victim of the crime and ordered the investigator to obtain the bank details of the bank for the deposit of the amount. He noted that this amount would have been used by Tandon for his personal benefit. Tandon’s lawyer had told the court that he did not admit guilt, but wanted to deposit the amount and assured that he would not claim it in the future.