KOCHI: The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) Central Range has registered a case against former presidents and members of the director board of the Perumbavoor Urban Service Cooperative Bank for loan manipulation and issuing the same in violation of norms.
The FIR was registered after conducting a preliminary inquiry based on a directive by Muvattupuzha Vigilance Court recently.
Former presidents of the bank M A Saleem and N A Rahim, secretary K Ravikumar and former director board members V P Rasak, V P Noushad, E S Rajan, Rajan T T, Pushpa Varghese and Eji Abraham have been booked. The illegal practices took place in Perumbavoor Urban Service Cooperative Society Ltd (No. 2024) between 2009 and 2014.
As per the FIR, the accused persons bypassed the norms to valuate property for granting loans and released funds illegally. “As the bank has regulations on sanctioning loans to governing board members and their relatives, the accused approached the bank with 27 bogus loan applications. They kept 18.15 cents of land owned by third accused Rasak as collateral. Each cent was valuated at `6 lakh. The value of the entire property was shown as `1.28 crore,” said a VACB officer.
The accused later managed to collect ID proofs of 27 persons and their signatures on documents for sanctioning a loan of `3 lakh to each of them, said the officer.
“In total, the bank sanctioned `81 lakh which was used by Rasak. The preliminary inquiry revealed that the presidents, board members and secretary of the bank knew about the manipulation but did not take any step against Rasak,” said the officer.
The Vigilance Court had directed VACB to probe the case following a complaint filed by Perumbavoor native C K Rafeeque. The case has been registered under the Section 13(1)(c)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and IPC sections 420, 120(b) and 34.