Banks’ exposure to troubled Deccan Chronicle put at Rs5,000 crore

11 Sep 2012

Banks have lent a total of around Rs5,000 crore to troubled media group Deccan Chronicle, which also runs the IPL cricket team Deccan Chargers, official sources said today.

Canara Bank, the lead creditor to the media group, is currently conducting a ''forensic audit'' of the accounts of Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd (DCH), financial services secretary D K Mittal said today.

''Canara Bank is the lead banker of lenders' consortium to DCH and the bank is conducting forensic audit of DCH,'' Mittal said.

Once the audit is complete, banks which have lent money to Deccan Chronicle Holdings will ''see if there are any faults and discrepancies'' in DCH, Mittal said.

Mittal put public sector banks' exposure to DCH at Rs3,800 crore and that of private lenders at Rs21.62 crore.

The government, Mittal said, will look into the risk of systemic failure in the case of DCH.