CBI knocks on SBI doors; Bhatt defends loan action
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday visited the premises of State Bank of India (SBI) in Mumbai as part of its continuing probe on the role of state-owned banks in the 2G spectrum scam.
However, SBI clarified that all necessary procedures were followed while sanctioning loans to some of the 2G spectrum scam tainted new telecom operators.
“I don’t think that anything SBI has done in this case justifies apprehensions or doubts of any kind”, Mr O.P.Bhatt, SBI Chairman, told reporters here when asked about the CBI probing the role of public sector banks, including SBI, in the 2G spectrum scam.
The Supreme Court had, last month, come down heavily on public sector banks for their role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam and asked CBI to probe into the matter. The CBI has already launched a preliminary enquiry. The CBI suspects that certain banks flouted norms to provide finance to companies such as Uninor and STel, which had received the 2G spectrum and licences in January 2008.
The investigation agency today examined the documents of some banks that had given loans to some real-estate firms that had forayed into telecom market, an agency report said.
The CBI sleuths in Delhi and Mumbai had asked banks about the files/documents relating to the loans sanctioned to telecom companies, especially Uninor and STel.
While this was construed as CBI raids in certain quarters, a senior Finance Ministry official later said in the evening that “no raids” per se were done on public sector banks.
Earlier in the day, Mr Bhatt said “this (reported raid by CBI sleuths) comes as a total surprise to me and nobody has told me (about this)”.
”As a banker, we look at various procedures, such as tangible assets, collateral securities, etc, for not only telecom firms but in other sectors also. This we have been doing for so many years. It is not a question of how much money we give, it is a question of whether that money is at risk or not”
Public sector banks had given Rs 10,000 crore to Uninor, a Unitech-Telenor joint venture, and Rs 1,538 crore to STel on the basis of the licence papers issued by the Department of Telecom (DoT).
Out of the Rs 10,000 crore loan to Uninor, a joint venture between Unitech and Telenor of Norway, SBI had sanctioned a loan of Rs 8,050 crore during 2009-2010 out of which the company had picked up Rs 500 crore so far.
The other banks that had sanctioned loans to Uninor were South Indian Bank, Corporation Bank, Allahabad Bank, Canara Bank, Oriental Bank, Central Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Yes Bank.
STel got Rs 1,538 crore loan from IDBI and IDBI Trusteeship Services Ltd during July and November 2009.
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