Bank of Maharashtra CMD, five others held

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Pune police on Wednesday arrested six persons, including the serving and a former chairman and managing director of Bank of Maharashtra in a cheating case lodged against city-based real estate developer D S Kulkarni and his wife, an official said.

These bank officials did not stick to RBI guidelines and did not verify if the loan amount was being used only for the project for which it had been sought, the EOW told a local court while seeking their custody.

The bank’s current Chairman and Managing Director Ravindra Marathe, Executive Director Rajendra Gupta, Zonal Manager Nityanand Deshpande, former chairman and managing director Sushil Muhnot, Kulkarni's chartered accountant Sunil Ghatpande, and Rajiv Newaskar, vicepresident of the engineering department of Kulkarni's firm, D S Kulkarni Developers Ltd (DSKDL), were arrested, the official added.

“As part of our probe into the cheating case against Kulkarni, it came to light that these bank officials colluded with DSKDL by misusing their powers and authority with dishonest and fraudulent intention to sanction and disburse the amount under the garb of a loan,” said Sudhir Hiremath, deputy commissioner of police, cyber and economic offences.

In May, the city police filed a 37,000-page charge sheet against Kulkarni and his wife in the case. According to the charge sheet, the total scam is worth ~20.4 billion. The accused floated nine different firms to siphon off the funds collected from 33,000 investors and fixeddeposit holders who were promised good returns on their FDs. Of the total scam amount, the deposit and loan fraud amount to ~10.8 billion.

The developer and his wife were arrested from Delhi on February 17 by Pune police.

In a statement, Bank of Maharashtra said its exposure to DS Kulkarni Developers was around ~945 million, which was fully secured.