Stating that the case has ‘rocked the entire banking system’, the Supreme Court on Friday rejected the bail plea of YES Bank’s founder Rana Kapoor on Friday.
The apex court also questioned why the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is taking so long to investigate the YES Bank scam pertaining to Rs 3,642-crore.
Rejecting the bail application, Justice Sanjiv Khanna stated, “This case rocked the Indian banking system. YES Bank went into difficulty and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had to step in to protect investors.”
“You have to take cases on priority where there are heavy stakes and a large number of persons involved. There is something wrong if the ED investigation is taking so long,” he added.
Representing the ED, the Additional Solicitor General (ASG) said, “There are hundreds of shell companies. The investigation is taking a long time because we are trying to get information from foreign countries.”
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who was appearing for Rana Kapoor, told the court, “The bank was put in difficulty but that’s no reason to keep a man behind bars indefinitely. He’s been behind bars since March 8, 2020. He has been incarcerated for over three years and has undergone more than the minimum sentence possible.”
Responding to this, the ASG informed the court that it is a complicated investigation.
When the court stated that it saw no need to intervene in the case, Abhishek Singhvi said that this is a never-ending investigation and that the PMLA court is overburdened.
Singhvi has also further said there was no loss of public funds and that Rana Kapoor demitted office in 2019.
The DHFL money laundering case pertains to mis-selling of the bank’s AT1 (Additional Tier-1) bonds to retail investors by the YES bank’s officials.
It was alleged that the bank and certain executives did not inform investors of the risk involved while selling the AT-1 bonds in the secondary market that began in 2016 and continued till 2019.
Founder Rana Kapoor has been imprisoned since March 2020.