The Enforcement Directorate has registered a money laundering case against media entrepreneur Subhash Chandra over an alleged loan fraud involving Life Insurance Corporation Housing Finance Limited, with the lender claiming a loss of Rs 1,322 crore, officials said on Monday.
The case has been filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after the agency took cognisance of a First Information Report registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The CBI action followed a complaint by LICHFL. A comment from Chandra was awaited, according to the report.
LICHFL’s complaint alleges that Chandra submitted net-worth certificates to support the approval and disbursal of two loans totalling Rs 980 crore. One was a Rs 500 crore facility extended to Vasant Sagar Properties Private Limited, with Pan India Infra Projects Private Limited as co-borrower. The other was a Rs 480 crore facility extended to Digital Subscriber Management and Consultancy Services Private Limited, with Spirit Infra Power and Multi Ventures Private Limited as co-borrower.
According to the complaint, the Rs 500 crore facility was sanctioned as a home-entity loan for takeover, top-up and business expansion. It was secured by a continuing guarantee executed by Chandra on March 28, 2018. The Rs 480 crore facility was sanctioned as a rental-discounting facility under a rental-securitisation scheme through a separate loan account and was also backed by a continuing guarantee executed by him, the FIR alleged.
The lender said a net-worth certificate issued by DJM and Co on March 28, 2018, placed Chandra’s net worth at around Rs 59,000 crore. A second certificate issued by chartered accountants MPJ and Co on July 6, 2018, placed it at Rs 40,562 crore and was used partly for sanctioning the digital facility, according to the complaint.
Both loans subsequently went into default, LICHFL alleged. The claimed loss of Rs 1,322 crore relates to the default on the two facilities, according to the lender’s complaint filed in August and included in the CBI FIR.
The allegations have also surfaced in insolvency proceedings involving Chandra. The CBI complaint says that, during proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, Chandra denied having the net worth stated in the certificates submitted to LICHFL. The FIR records his net worth as Rs 31.79 crore in 2024 and says he placed his net worth during 2017-18 at no more than Rs 40,000 crore.
The FIR alleges that Chandra acted in collusion with the borrower companies and their officers and directors, and accused him of creating documents showing an inflated net worth to induce LICHFL to release funds. These remain allegations recorded in the complaint and FIR; the registration of an enforcement case does not establish guilt.
The LICHFL case is also linked to a wider creditor-recovery dispute. The lender was among those that approached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal against a recent National Company Law Tribunal repayment plan. That plan would allow creditors to recover about Rs 6.5 crore from Chandra’s personal estate against claims of roughly Rs 22,006 crore, according to the report. The next steps in the ED case will include investigation into the alleged loan transactions, the companies involved and the documents submitted to obtain the facilities.
