The Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai police on Friday initiated the process of filing a chargesheet in the PMC Bank fraud case against the five accused. The chargesheet runs to 32,959 pages. The police haverecorded the statements of around 340 witnesses, including 90 depositors of PMC Bank.

In the chargesheet, the EOW has named Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan, promoters of HDIL; Joy Thomas, former managing director of the bank; Waryam Singh, former chairman; and Surjit Singh Arora, former director of the bank.

The HDIL group is the largest borrower of PMC Bank, with dues of ₹4,335.46 crore that has remained unpaid since 2008.

The chargesheet invokes Sections 409, 420, 406, 467, 468, 471, 477, 201, 120(B) of the Indian Penal Code, covering fraud, cheating, money laundering, and criminal breach of trust. The quantum of the fraud is put at ₹4,700 crore. According to EOW officials, as the investigation progresses, the amount is likely to rise.

The voluminous chargesheet includes the forensic audit report of PMC Bank. The chargesheet also elaborated on how 21,000 fake accounts were created by bank officials to hoodwink the Reserve Bank of India on the bank’s status on NPAs, including loans given to HDIL and its companies.

According to the chargesheet, the bank had replaced 44 loan accounts, whose individual outstandings (principal plus interest) were high with 21,049 fictitious loan accounts, with low individual outstandings.

According to EoWsources, Waryam Singh was the key player in the fraud and his active involvement kept the fraud under wraps for a long time.

Meanwhile the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is investigating the money laundering angle to the scam on which it had filed its chargesheet earlier this month.

Also read p10

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW