Mumbai | ICICI bank has revealed that it has received a new whistleblower complaint regarding irregularities in respect of 31 loan accounts worth Rs 6,082 crore. The complaint is regarding incorrect accounting of interest income on non-performing assets (NPAs) as fees and overvaluation of security provided for corporate loans.
According to sources, the bank received a complaint in March 2018, pertains to loans disbursed in earlier years. The allegations have not connected with the charges which are been inquired by Justice B N Srikrishna. Srikrishna’s investigations are into charges that MD & CEO Chanda Kochhar faced a conflict of interest disbursing loans to Videocon, the latest disclosure pertains to income recognition.
The bank in a statement said that the 31 loans, 29 were fully classified as NPAs between FY12 and FY17 and two accounts were classified as NPAs by December 2017. The aggregate loans (adjusted for write-offs) outstanding as of March 2018 were Rs 6,082 crore — above 1.1% of the bank’s gross loans.
The statement further stated that the anonymous communication was treated as a whistleblower complaint and an enquiry was instituted according to the company’s policy. This was done under the supervision of the audit committee of the board of directors, without the involvement of the senior management other than internal audit.
The bank said that “The interim report of the enquiry was reviewed in detail by the audit committee and statutory auditors prior to finalisation of accounts for the year ended March 2018”. ICICI Bank said that if the difference between the bank’s asset classification and what was noticed in RBI inspection was over 15%, the bank was bound to disclose it while classifying that bad loans were in the lines of RBI regulations.
“No disclosure was required to be made by the bank with respect to RBI’s supervisory process for FY17,” ICICI Bank said in its letter.
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