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| ICICI Bank to seek probe into 'sabotage' acts by rivals |
| Press Trust Of India / New Delhi Sep 14, 2009, 00:07 IST |
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Stung by reports that it sold dud home loans, ICICI Bank has decided to approach the government agencies and market regulator Sebi for a thorough probe into what it called an attempt to ‘sabotage’ the bank by some corporate rivals.
“The Bank is not going to take it lying low. We apprehend that some corporate entity with interests in financial sector is behind the attempts of sabotage. We will ask for a probe by the Economic Offences Wing, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and other agencies,” an official of ICICI Bank said today on condition of anonymity, but declined to name the rival.
Even last year, ICICI Bank had approached Sebi, the Reserve Bank and government agencies for a probe into hammering down of prices of its shares by what it called “vested interest”, who started the rumour that there was a run on the bank.
 ICICI Bank CEO and Managing Director Chanda Kochhar said that in last eight years, the bank had sold Rs 1,500 crore bad home loans to Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Ltd (ARCIL) and wondered how the reports of dud loans of Rs 10,000 crore had come from.
She said that even out of the total loans sold to ARCIL, fraud was detected in just five cases involving less that Rs one crore. “And that too, we had reported to police and sought investigation way back in 2007,” she said.
Stating that the total home loan portfolio of the bank was around Rs 55,000 crore, she quipped: “You could count how much of fraud amount works out as a percentage of our total loan portfolio.”
Even The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has denied having made any recommendations for a fresh audit by the RBI into the home loan accounts of ICICI Bank. “ICAI has not asked for any central bank audit of assets sold to ARCIL,” the accounting regulator said in a statement today.
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