MUMBAI: The city economic offences wing (EOW) has registered a case against a private firm, ABK Industries, for causing a loss of Rs 10.2 crore to Citibank allegedly by submitting forged tax invoices and bills of exchange.
According to the complaint filed by a representative of Citibank at Kherwadi police, the crime took place between July 2017 and October 2018. Kherwadi police registered a case of forgery and criminal conspiracy, and the case was transferred to the EOW.
A police source said that the managing director and two other directors of ABK Industries have been mentioned as accused in the FIR.
Police sources said that the accused had approached Citibank for a business loan. They claimed that they wanted to purchase material from another company and needed a letter of credit. The accused mortgaged a residential property worth around Rs 5 crore and some trading stocks with the bank, which then issued a letter of credit. It was given to the company from where the material was being purchased. Citibank transferred Rs 20 crore to the seller company.
Initial loan repayment was done by the accused, but later they stopped payment.
While going through the documents submitted by ABK Industries, the bank found that the accused had submitted fake tax invoices and bills of exchange. Citibank then carried out an inquiry, and later approached the police.
A police officer said that the material seller company, in whose account the money was transferred by the bank, was allegedly being run by a former employee of ABK Industries. The money from the seller company’s account was transferred to ABK Industries, police probe indicated. A source said that the accused company had initially purchased some material from the seller company, but later there was not much purchase as shown in transactions. Investigators are now going through all the financial transactions of the firm.
The banking units of the EOW have registered over a dozen cases in the last three years, where the cheating amount crossed Rs 10,000 crore. Among the loan fraud cases probed were of Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank and Maharashtra State Cooperative (MSC) Bank. But in the MSC Bank case, the officials filed a closure report stating there was no cognizable offence found in the investigation. The court also accepted the report.