Rivals are playing false, says ICICI Bank

“The Bank is not going to take it lying low. We apprehend that some corporate entity with interests in financial sector is behind the attempts of sabotage. We will ask for a probe by the Economic Offences Wing, Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and other agencies,” an ICICI Bank official said on Sunday, but declined to name the rival.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India said in a statement the reports that it has asked for a central bank audit into the ICICI Bank’s assets sold to Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Ltd (ARCIL) are “totally incorrect.”

Even last year, ICICI Bank had approached Sebi, the Reserve Bank of India and government agencies for a probe into hammering down of prices of its shares by what it called “vested interest”, who started the rumour that there was a run on the bank.

ICICI Bank CEO & Managing Director Chanda Kochhar said in last eight years, the bank had sold Rs 1,500 crore bad home loans to ARCIL and wondered how the reports of dud loans of Rs 10,000 crore had come from.

She said fraud was detected in just five cases involving less than Rs one crore. “And that too, we had reported to police and sought investigation way back in 2007,” she said.
The total home loan portfolio of the ICICI Bank is around Rs 55,000 crore.

“You could count how much of fraud amount works out as a percentage of our total loan portfolio,” Kochhar quipped.