New Delhi, July 11: ITC chairman YC Deveshwar, nominees of financial institutions (FIs) and its parent company BAT are among the 20 present and former directors and top executives who have been chargesheeted by the Enforcement Directorate for Fera violations of $114 million.

The directorate issued chargesheets late on Friday evening to Deveshwar, former chairman KL Chugh, BAT nominees Norman Davis and Richard Pilbeam, FI nominees PV Narasimhan, KP Narasimhan and HC Sharma, present and former executive directors Saurabh Misra, R P Aggarwal, B Mitter, N Sitaraman, G K P Reddy, RK Kutty, FR Vevaina and senior executives E Ravindranath, MB Rao, K K Rao, K Vaidyanath, N Laxminarayanan and SK Agarwal.

Of the five chargesheets issued by the directorate to the company, its directors and top executives, four spell out violations of retaining export proceeds abroad and, one to transfer and lending of foreign exchange to ITC's estranged trading partners, Chitalias. The chargesheets pertain to violations of Sections 8, 9, 18 and 68 of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1973. The accused have been given 30 days to reply to the showcause notices. The directors of the company have been charged under Section 68 (1) and (2) under which that every person on the board of directors is deemed to be guilty till such time as he proves that he exercised due diligence to prevent such a contravention, or the contravention took place without their knowledge.

The chargesheets have been issued by the directorate's headquarters in Delhi.

Adjudication proceedings will start only after all the replies have been evaluated. Sources said six to seven chargesheets would be issued later.

The directorate had sought legal opinion before issuing chargesheets to the BAT nominees and FI nominees since they were part-time directors. The role of the FI nominees on the boards of companies would be under scrutiny with the issue of chargesheets.

During the course of investigations, the directorate searched around 40 premises all over the country and collected crucial evidence from the US and Singapore. The violations relate to the company's transactions, mainly export of agricultural commodities, between 1991 and 1996.

The directorate is speeding up investigations in other crucial cases.

PTI adds from Calcutta: Enforcement department deputy director KK Kabirpanthi said the chargesheets were issued by special director MC Joshi in New Delhi. According to him, this was possibly the first time in the history of Indian corporates that institutional nominees are being chargesheeted.

As a result of this, the FI nominees would become more careful in future and protect the interests of the institutions they represented, he said. Kabirpanthi said some more chargesheets were likely to be issued soon.