New Delhi, Feb 19 (NIE): Close on the heels of the Rs 11,400 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday registered an FIR against Rotomac Pen and its promoter Vikram Kothari for allegedly defaulting on loans of over Rs 800 crore from multiple banks.

The agency is currently carrying out raids at three locations in Kanpur where the company is based. Kothari, his wife and his son are being questioned by a CBI team in connection with the case at their residence in Kanpur. Kothari was earlier rumoured to have left the country, but he clarified through local media yesterday that he was in Kanpur.

The CBI has registered a case against Rotomac, a pen manufacturer, on the basis of a complaint from the Bank of Baroda (BoB). The bank had in February 2017 declared Rotomac as a “willful defaulter”. Rotomac had contested the tag in the Allahabad High Court on the ground that it had offered Rs 300 crore assets to the bank and still it was called a willful defaulter. The company had got an order in its favour but failed to pay the loans.

The Kanpur-based company’s owner had taken a loan of more than Rs 800 crore from over five state-owned banks.

Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Indian Overseas Bank and Union Bank of India allegedly compromised their rules to sanction loans to Rotomac, sources said. Kothari took a loan of Rs 485 crore from Mumbai-based Union Bank of India and a loan of Rs 352 crore from Kolkata-based Allahabad Bank.

A year later, Kothari has allegedly not paid back either the interest or the loan. Last year, Bank of Baroda, a consortium partner declared pen manufacturer Rotomac Global Pvt Ltd as “wilful defaulter”.

The development comes less than a week after Punjab National Bank (PNB) detected a USD 1.77 billion (about Rs 11,400 crore) scam wherein Modi allegedly acquired fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoUs) from a branch in Mumbai to secure overseas credit from other Indian lenders.