Pune bank officers involved in cheque discounting fraud worth Rs 80 crore: Police

PUNE: The economic offences’ wing of the city police on Monday established the role of another director of Shivajirao Bhosale Cooperative Bank in the Rs71.78-crore fraud, taking the number of people booked in the cheating case to 17.
The probe also revealed that non-performing assets (accounts) were fraudulently used to transfer Rs80 crore using the facility of “cheque discounting”. Joint commissioner of police Ravindra Shisve said the amount of the scam was increasing and the role of every person/party involved in it would be probe thoroughly.
Deputy commissioner of police (economic offences wing ) Sambhaji Kadam said apart from the cheque discounting fraud, the suspects misappropriated Rs2 crore despite the restrictions imposed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in late 2019. “We are investigating where the Rs2 crore has gone and who are the beneficiaries. With this, the scam amount increased to Rs153 crore,” he said.
The city police on February 26 arrested NCP MLC Anil Bhosale, also the director of the bank, with the bank’s chief executive officer, Tanaji Padwal, another director Suryaji Jadhav and officer Shailesh Bhosale. They are in the police custody till March 6.
The fraud came to light during an audit by a statutory auditor assigned in May last year by the RBI. According to the police, the bank’s directors and other officers fudged the entries of the bank’s cash balance records and siphoned off Rs71.78 crore to some other accounts for personal benefits during the 2018-19 financial year.
Kadam said, “The arrested persons and others diverted money to the account of a man under the cheque discounting facility. For these transactions, the suspects used the NPA (non-perming asset) accounts of the bank. Later, the bank officials attempted to show the cheque discounting transactions as adjustment against the NPA accounts.”
For cheque discounting transactions, a bank buys cheque before it is due and credits the amount (after deducting certain discounting charge) to the customer’s account. A fraud is perpetrated when typically, a buyer and seller, acting in connivance, win the bank’s confidence by carrying out a string of transactions, where the buyer agrees to honour the payment. As these come across as normal trade transactions, the bank agrees to raise the bill discounting limit. After a default, when a buyer fails to pay up, the seller comes up with explanations like product defect or cash crunch faced by the buyer for non-payment.
Kadam said the police would soon file another case against MLC Bhosale and others with the Deccan Gymkhana police pertaining to the misappropriation of Rs1.5 crore. He also said there would be more arrests in the case.