BHUBANESWAR: THE Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Tuesday arrested an assistant general manager (AGM) of Odisha State Cooperative Bank (OSCB) in connection with a loan fraud of a whopping Rs 29 crore in Rourkela branch.
Raghunath Sahoo, who also served as in-charge of Rourkela branch of the bank during 2005-2010, is not the only man who is being investigated for the scam as the probe agency is also looking at another officer who had sanctioned about `65 lakh worth of loans in violation of norms.
However, it is Sahoo who is accused of disbursing loans of `28.89 crore throwing all banking and cooperative norms to the wind. Special housing loans, personal loans, educational loans, vehicle loans and general housing loans were allegedly sanctioned without collateral security, hypothecation or mortgage and even without consent form of the land owners.
As many as 1,250 loan files have been recovered by the Economic Offences Wing which registered a case on July 31 basing on a report filed by Deputy Secretary to the Cooperation Department SK Mishra, said Special DG (Crime Branch) Bijay Kumar Sharma. A special audit conducted for the 10-year period from 2005 to 2015 formed the basis of the complaint by the department.
Many of the loanees are employees of Rourkela Steel Plant as well as Government servants. In most of the cases, authorisation of drawing and disbursing officers for deduction of loan from the salary were not even attempted by the bank. Sharma said, preliminary investigation suggests that Sahoo violated guidelines of State Cooperative Circulars as well as special house building loans.
During investigation, the EOW found that many loan files did not have basic documents. In several cases, only loan applications and sanction letters were recovered apart from a couple of other documents. Mandatory approvals and appraisals as well as field verification reports were missing which meant the loans were sanctioned without any adherence to the guidelines.
What is surprising is that while Sahoo kept sanctioning the loans in a blatant and illegal manner, it was overlooked by the Department for so many years. During the 10-year period, he was also promoted from the manager rank to assistant general manager which is baffling.
Sources said, the EOW is likely to identify high-value loanees and bring them under the scanner of investigation too. Earlier, Cooperation Minister Surya Narayan Patro had announced that the case would be probed by Crime Branch.