PMC officials knew about ‘hidden’ loan accounts: EOW

MUMBAI: The charge sheet filed by the economic offences wing (EOW) of Mumbai police on the ₹6,670 crore fraud at the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank says that many senior officials at the lender knew about the “hidden” loan accounts of Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) for at least two years before the scam came to light.

The charge sheet, which is seen by HT, adds that the chief manager of the bank’s retail loan section informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) about the 44 masked loan accounts only after the income tax department started demanding details of the accounts and other banks started pressurising PMC Bank, and Bank of India moved the National Company Law Tribunal.

“Since the year 2017 many of the bank officials of PMC Bank were aware of shielded/hidden accounts of HDIL which were not disclosed and in many accounts the balances were also mutilated,” the charge sheet states.

It adds that on September 17, 2019, the chief manager of the retail loan section first visited income tax authorities and provided them the details of HDIL loan accounts and later went to the RBI office at the Bandra Kurla Complex and apprised about the masked HDIL loan accounts.

Two days later, a three-member team of the RBI went to the cooperative bank and unearthed the massive fraud. The EOW of Mumbai Police has filed a charge sheet running into around 33,000 pages. It narrates in detail how certain employees of the co-operative bank were forced to create false data and false reports to be submitted to the RBI for hiding the problematic loan accounts from the banking regulator.

“HDIL group of companies are the largest borrower of PMC Bank and they have kept dues to the tune of ₹4335.46 crore unpaid since 2008. Joy Thomas, (the then) Managing Director and other functionaries including the Board of Directors, Executives of the PMC Bank intentionally reported false records of its accounts to the RBI to suppress the material position of loan accounts of HDIL group of companies,” the charge sheet said.

EOW, has claimed that it was the practice of PMC bank to show an additional count of fictitious loan accounts to conceal the HDIL group companies’ credit exposure.