MUMBAI: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW), Mumbai, on Monday said it has registered a First Information Report (FIR) against the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-Operative Bank’s (PMC Bank) former managing director, the chairman, as well as the bank’s major borrower Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) for alleged fraud and irregularities.
Mumbai Police said as per the Reserve Bank of India’s directives, PMC Bank’s administrator Jasbir Singh Matta filed the complaint against ex-managing director Joy Thomas, chairman Waryam Singh and other bank officials for not declaring big loan accounts and Non-Performing Assets (NPA), and prima facie causing a loss of Rs 4,355.46 crore to the bank.
The FIR states that PMC Bank officials, along with HDIL directors, had caused the loss by not declaring NPAs even though there was no repayment of dues between 2008 and August 2019.
The information was hidden from the RBI with false and forged report of accounts with small loans and fake accounts leading to the loss, it said.
“The aforesaid persons (PMC Bank officials as well directors of HDIL, Wadhawans) colluded with criminal intent and conspired to use the loan amount for their own benefit by cheating the bank. Hence, EOW has filed the FIR under Sections 409, 420, 465, 466, 471 and 120(B). A special team has been formed to investigate the case,” a Mumbai Police statement said.
While Thomas last week said he was not aware of how the large exposure and NPAs were hidden, he admitted to wrongdoings to hide the NPAs in the letter to RBI last week.
The letter, now in public domain, shows him admitting that some of the large accounts were not reported to RBI from 2008 due to fear of reputational risk. In 2011, loans to HDIL at Rs 1,026 crore was more than half of the total advances of Rs 2,000 crore, he said.
When RBI started asking for indent for Advances master 2017 onwards, Thomas said the “stressed legacy accounts belonging to this group were replaced with dummy accounts to match the outstanding balances in the balance sheet. As the loans were mentioned as loans against deposits and were of lower amounts they were never checked by RBI.”