The Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday searched the premises of liquor baron Vijay Mallya and chief financial officer of Kingfisher Airlines for alleged default of a Rs.900-crore loan, in conspiracy with unknown officials of the IDBI bank.

“A case of corruption and criminal conspiracy has been registered against Mr. Mallya, director of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, its chief financial officer A. Raghunathan and unknown bank officials. In this connection, searches were carried out at five places in Mumbai, Bangalore and Goa,” said a CBI official.

Search operations were on at Mr. Mallya’s office and residence at UB City in Bengaluru till late in the evening. CBI sources said several incriminating documents had been found during the searches and were being scrutinised. They, however, refused to comment on the nature of the documents recovered.

The CBI has alleged that the loan was sanctioned and disbursed to the company in violation of rules.

“A preliminary inquiry into the allegations revealed the bank officials sanctioned the loan despite an adverse internal report, in conspiracy with the company’s promoters or directors and the chief financial officer. Also, the bank went ahead with the disbursal of loan amount even when the firm was unable to repay loans earlier obtained from a consortium of 17 banks of which IDBI was a part,” said the official.

The CBI has booked a case against the accused under Section 120-B of the IPC for criminal conspiracy read with Section 409 of the IPC for “criminal breach of trust by a public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent” and under Section 13 (1) (d) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

The consortium had an outstanding exposure of over Rs.7,000 crore payable by Kingfisher.

The CBI had initiated the inquiry against Kingfisher Airlines about three years ago. In August 2014, as part of investigations into 30 major cases of nationalised bank loan defaults, the agency again sought more documents from the bank.

(With inputs from Bengaluru)