The Special Judge for CBI Cases, Hyderabad, on Tuesday sentenced R.P. Garg, former Assistant General Manager of Punjab National Bank, Banjara Hills, and three others, in a bank fraud case registered in February 2016.
The court sentenced Mr.Garg, Jitender Kumar Agarwal, then MD of M/s. Sheetal Refineries Limited, authorised signatory Sudhir Bhuraria and Manish Bhuraria to undergo five years of rigorous imprisonment and pay a fine of ₹75,000 each. The court also imposed a fine of ₹2 lakh on the private company.
According to a release, CBI had registered the case on February 19, 2016 against M/s. Sheetal Refineries Limited and its directors on the allegations of committing bank fraud and causing a loss of ₹53.82 crore to Punjab National Bank.
It was alleged that the accused had availed credit facilities from PNB Large Corporate Branch, Hyderabad, and presented false information to the bank including with respect to share application money, false stock statements for availing the credit facilities and audited balance sheets.
It was further alleged that during the relevant period, the accused opened four Letters of Credit (LCs) and the conditions in the LCs were not uniform. It was also alleged that the then AGM had not checked the difference in the amount of invoices and confirmation letters which resulted in excess payment by the bank to the borrower.
Regarding transportation of goods, the said AGM had not imposed the condition to transport through IBA-approved transporters and allowed the accused persons to submit lorry receipts where the transporter was not in the approved list of IBA.
The LC terms and conditions were also amended without the approval of the sanctioning authority and thereby, exceeded the delegated powers.
A charge sheet was filed against six accused persons after investigation against Mr. Garg, M/s. SRL and its MD and others. The then CMD of SRL had died and the case against him was abated by the trial court.
