Court Denies CBI Closure Report in Rs 100 Crore Bank Fraud Case Involving BJP Leader Mohit Kamboj and His Firm
The Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at the Esplanade court in Mumbai has declined to accept the closure report submitted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a case involving the Chief Managing Director (CMD) of Tenet Exim Private Limited, as well as BJP leader Mohit Kamboj and others, in a bank fraud case amounting to nearly Rs 100 crore.
The CBI’s Mumbai branch initiated this case following an FIR filed by PK Jagan, the Deputy General Manager of Central Bank of India, Nariman Point. The FIR implicated Tenet Exim Private Limited, its directors and guarantors, as well as their chartered accountant in fraudulent activities against the informant bank.
The allegations revolved around the borrower firm, Tenet Exim, and its CMD Kamboj, and accused them of cheating and forgery by providing false documentation. This included manipulating debtors and creditors, along with submitting falsified financial statements to secure a credit facility of Rs 50 crore from the bank. The FIR originally claimed that the accused had dishonestly diverted funds, causing an initial loss to the bank of Rs 103.81 crore, which was later reduced to Rs 94.39 crore after a one-time settlement on February 26, 2020.
In a separate case involving the same accused, the special CBI court had accepted a closure report on January 16, after the informant bank gave its consent. However, in this case, the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Jaywant C Yadav, noted that the informant bank had not granted an unconditional approval for the closure report and had contested it in court.
Upon examining the closure report, the magistrate found sufficient evidence to support the allegations outlined in the FIR. The court emphasized that the earlier acceptance of the closure report in a different case was not relevant to the present situation. Furthermore, the court pointed out that the CBI’s final report lacked details regarding the investigation into actual transactions involving the sale and purchase of goods, fabricated records of debtors and creditors, and misrepresentation regarding the infusion of equity capital, among other discrepancies.
The court also noted that the FIR had alleged offenses related to forgery and the submission of false documents, yet the charges filed against the accused were limited to sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
