Former Supreme Court judge B N Srikrishna has accepted a request from the board of ICICI Bank to head an inquiry into the conflict of interest allegations against the bank’s CEO Chanda Kochhar. He will be assisted by the bank’s audit committee, which is headed by independent director Uday Chitale.
ICICI Bank did not respond to queries both on Srikrishna’s appointment and on speculation that Kochhar would step aside during the inquiry. Justice Srikrishna confirmed that he has acceded to the request to head the inquiry but did not comment on anything else.
The appointment of justice Srikrishna comes a fortnight after ICICI Bank said that it has decided to institute an independent enquiry into the allegations levelled by an anonymous whistleblower against Kochhar. Justice Srikrishna had chaired the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC).
Although the bank did not specify the exact complaint by the whistleblower Arvind Gupta, a whistleblower had alleged that the Ruia brothers of Essar group got favours from the bank for “round-tripping” investments into her spouse Deepak Kochhar’s NuPower Group. He alleged that the Ruias funded NuPower and its subsidiary through their son-in-law Nishant Kanodia and nephew Anirudh Bhuwalka during December 2010 to March 2012 by subscribing to compulsorily convertible preference shares and equity shares.
Last week, finance minister Piyush Goyal had said that the law would take its own course on the issue of corporate governance in ICICI Bank. He said that the bank was conducting internal investigations and there were also external inquiries. Goyal appeared to be referring to an investigation by Sebi into whether the bank had met all disclosure requirements when it came to the conflict of interest issue.
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