ICICI, which has loans on its books valued at more than $1 trillion, has been thrust into the spotlight over its role in financing West Australian coal mine Griffin, which collapsed last year owing about $1.5 billion
Sucheta Dalal, one of India’s foremost investigative reporters has labelled the country’s biggest private bank, ICICI, which is at the centre of an unfolding energy crisis in Australia, secretive and “arrogant”, reported abc.net.au.
ICICI, which has loans on its books valued at more than $1 trillion, has been thrust into the spotlight over its role in financing West Australian coal mine Griffin, which collapsed last year owing about $1.5 billion.
Griffin’s problems have helped bring about a crisis in West Aaustralia’s power industry, which still generates about a third of its main grid electricity from coal supplied by Griffin and another local mine, Premier Coal. Despite owning the lion’s share of Griffin’s outstanding debt, ICICI has refused to make any public disclosures about its plans for the mine or whether it has written down its position.
In an opinion piece published this month, financial journalist Sucheta Dalal took ICICI to task over what she said was its “arrogant silence” on the Griffin saga. Dalal also questioned why the country’s financial regulator had not carried out an investigation of ICICI. “Can ICICI Bank get away with its arrogant silence on such a serious issue, where it has allegedly acted as the puppet master all along,” Dalal wrote for Indian financial publication Moneylife.
“What made ICICI Bank take on the Griffin Coal problem instead of walking away and cutting its losses? Also, is ICICI Bank acting alone or is it part of a syndicate of banks? There are no answers. When will the banking regulator find out and tell us why ICICI has plunged more than a billion dollars into a hopeless bet on foreign soil?”
The comments by Dalal are the first indication that ICICI’s disastrous foray into Australian energy and mining is gaining attention at home. Hemindra Hazari, a banking analyst based in Mumbai, said the comments carried weight given Dalal’s standing as a “top investigative journalist”.
On Twitter, Hazari highlighted reporting that had “completely exposed” ICICI’s actions. He was critical of the investments made by Indian companies — along with their financial backers — in the last decade as the country sought to put its stamp on global energy trading. These corporate adventures detailed high-profile examples such as Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s attempt to open up the Galilee Basin in central Queensland as a coal mining province. They also included ill-fated efforts to expand overseas by conglomerate Lanco Infratech, which paid $750 million for the Griffin coal mine in 2010. Lanco toppled into liquidation in 2017, the highest profile casualty of a shake-up by the Indian government of its bankruptcy laws.
Dalal argued that before its bankruptcy, Lanco had already established a pattern of using political connections to win government infrastructure projects and obtain loans from banks, many of which were state-owned. She said Lanco had also consistently been the beneficiary of favourable loan restructures when it ran into trouble servicing its debts.
Auditors for Oceania gave the firm the worst possible assessment when signing off on its financial accounts. Sindhu, meanwhile, had its debt downgraded to junk — or sub-investment — status by a subsidiary of global ratings giant Fitch in 2020
Citing a series of reports by the ABC detailing Griffin’s woes, Dalal said the warning signs should have been clear to Lanco and, by extension, ICICI. “An Australian media company has now opened a new can of worms showing how Lanco had purchased a lemon in 2010 and its bankers were either clueless or ignorant and complicit,” Dalal wrote. “The Lanco group has inflicted heavy losses on Indian banks, which have all been paid by the people through the exchequer, but the ongoing role of bankers, as alleged in these articles, clearly needs deeper investigation. So far, I have focused on the lending shenanigans of public sector banks, but the Lanco-Griffin saga reveals that ICICI Bank’s lending needs scrutiny and disclosures.”
Although the biggest creditor to Griffin, ICICI’s position in the mine has been complicated by the involvement of little-known Indian conglomerate Sindhu Trade Links. Through its Australian subsidiary Oceania Resources, Sindhu lent $US60 million ($87 million) to Griffin in 2015. But in a twist described as “mixed-up and murky” in state parliament by an Opposition MP, Oceania borrowed the $US60 million from Griffin’s biggest lender, ICICI. In channelling the money through Oceania, ICICI subordinated its own claim over the Griffin mine despite being by far the biggest lender to the venture.
Auditors for Oceania gave the firm the worst possible assessment when signing off on its financial accounts. Sindhu, meanwhile, had its debt downgraded to junk — or sub-investment — status by a subsidiary of global ratings giant Fitch in 2020.
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