ICICI Bank row: Chanda Kochhar may have to pay Rs 25 cr

ICICI Bank and Chanda Kochhar row: Can Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) ask Chanda Kochhar to resign from her post of Chief Executive Officer at ICICI Bank? Looks unlikely. However, it can very well levy a penalty up to Rs 25 crore or three times the ill-gotten personal profits as per Sebi rules. 

It is Sebi’s adjudicating officer who finally decides the amount of the penalty, reported Livemint, citing two executives familiar with the development. “Only a financial penalty can be levied as under the current notice, there is no provision for asking the CEO to step down,” informed one of the two executives to Livemint. 

Meanwhile, in a fresh development, alleged lapses involving Kochhar and her family members has come under the scanner of the US markets regulator SEC too besides the Indian regulators Sebi and RBI and domestic investigative agencies.

PTI approached a spokesperson for the SEC Office of Public Affairs, but he declined to comment. The queries sent to ICICI Bank also remained unanswered.

Sources revealed that SEC was actively looking into the matter as ICICI Bank is listed in the US too and it may seek further details from Sebi, which has already issued show-cause notices to ICICI Bank and Kochhar as part of its probe. 

ICICI Bank is also running an independent enquiry into allegations of ‘conflict of interest’ and ‘quid pro quo’ in Kochhar’s dealing with certain borrowers.

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Earlier in March, when reports first surfaced in this regard, the bank had said its board had “full confidence and reposes full faith” in her.

The RBI and the Corporate Affairs Ministry is also looking into the matter, while the CBI had earlier registered a preliminary enquiry against Chanda Kochhar’s husband, among others, and extensively questioned her brother-in-law in April. 

The cases under scanner include the bank’s Rs 3,250 crore loan to the Videocon Group in 2012 and the alleged involvement of Kochhar family members.