Several senior bank officials posted at the Jangpura branch of PNB have also come under EOW scanner for allegedly helping the fraudsters get the loans.
Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has uncovered seven cases of alleged loan fraud, amounting to Rs 3.5 crore, at Punjab National Bank in the capital. Additional Commissioner of Police (EOW) Suvashis Choudhary told The Indian Express that several such complaints were transferred to their wing from the southeast district police.
“After conducting an inquiry, we have registered seven FIRs. One complaint is pending. The cases were registered after we received a complaint from Gopal D Devnami, a senior branch manager at PNB,” he said.
Several senior bank officials posted at the Jangpura branch of PNB have also come under EOW scanner for allegedly helping the fraudsters get the loans.
“We are probing their roles and will likely issue notices in their names, asking them to join the investigation,” Choudhary said.
Maintaining that the loans were provided to the customers between 2013 and 2015, sources in the EOW said “most of these were taken in the name of obtaining a credit facility”.
“The complaint was filed at Hazrat Nizamuddin police station in 2016, when the fraud was detected by the bank during their annual audit. However, no action was taken by police so far and the cases were recently transferred to the EOW,” police sources said.
Elaborating on one of the seven complaints, a senior police officer said that two residents of northeast Delhi applied for a credit facility in the form of working capital limit of Rs 60 lakh for their business of manufacturing and trading of aluminium wires in 2014.
“A year later, the credit facility was enhanced from Rs 60 lakh to Rs 95 lakh. But in the meantime, the firm started defaulting on repayment. In 2016, bank officials visited the premises of the firm and found that only nominal stock, worth around Rs 5 lakh, was available there. The bank communicated with them, asking them to submit their fresh stock statement. However, the bank got no response from them,” the officer said.
He added that they later found that the firm had sold its stock without depositing sale proceeds with them.
During investigation into another case, EOW found that the property deed deposited by the guarantor was fake. They found that the details of the real owner and the property, as mentioned on the deed deposited with the bank, did not match with the documents submitted to the sub-registrar’s office.