The Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police on Friday submitted a 32,000-page charge sheet naming five persons in the multi-crore Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank scam at a magistrate court here.
The charge sheet has named former managing director of the bank Joy Thomas, former chairman Waryam Singh, former director of the bank Surjit Singh Arora, and Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) promoters Rakesh Wadhawan and Sarang Wadhawan. The police has also arrested seven other bank officials and a supplementary charge sheet will be filed against them later.
The accused have been charged under various sections of the IPC, including cheating, fraud, destruction of evidence and falsification of documents. They were arrested soon after the scam came to light in September this year.
The charge sheet includes the forensic audit report of the PMC bank and documents of properties purchased by the accused with kickbacks received by them for giving favours to HDIL and the Wadhawans.
It also has statements of 340 witnesses, including account holders at the bank. The police had recorded the statements of four crucial witnesses before a magistrate under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The fraud at the PMC Bank came to light in September this year after the Reserve Bank of India discovered that the bank had allegedly created fictitious accounts to hide over ₹6,700 crore in loans extended to the almost-bankrupt HDIL.
According to the RBI, PMC bank masked 44 problematic loan accounts, including HDIL loan accounts, by tampering with its core banking system, and the accounts were accessible only to limited staff members.
The city police’s EOW and Enforcement Directorate has registered offences in the case.
On September 23, 2019, the RBI had imposed regulatory restrictions on the bank. The withdrawal limit for account holders was initially kept at ₹1,000 per day, which was increased gradually to ₹50,000.
