Kirit Somaiya Maharashtra Cooperation Department minister Atul Save held a review meeting in the Rs 758-crore Pen Cooperative Urban Bank scam case earlier this week, where former Lok Sabha MP of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Kirit Somaiya and officials from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) were present. However, a representative of the depositors — the victims in the scam case and the most important party — was not asked to attend the meeting.
The state government in 2015 formed a special force committee comprising representatives of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and representatives of the depositors; the Raigad district collector, the Raigad Superintendent of Police, and the Divisional Joint Registrar of Cooperative Societies (Konkan) to monitor the recovery of money in the 2010 scam case.
When contacted, Save said he had held the meeting on Monday to discuss the persisting issues in the case. “We called Somaiya to the meeting because he had raised issues regarding the bank in the past. An official from the ED was called for checking the status (of the case),” Save told The Indian Express, adding that he just wanted to understand the issue better during the meeting.
Naren Jadhav, a representative of the depositors, said, “When I got to know about the scheduled meeting, I checked whether I was invited. When I got to know that representatives of the depositors were not invited to attend the meeting, I also chose not to travel to Mumbai for it.”
In 2016, the Bombay High Court had allowed sale of the urban bank properties to ensure that the depositors — the victims — get their money back. The ED later approached the Supreme Court, which stayed the entire process. “The case has been kept for hearing on November 4, and we want the ED to lift the Supreme Court stay so that we get our money back at the earliest. These issues needed to be discussed,” Jadhav added.
Save later said that he will soon hold another such meeting and all the stakeholders in the case should mandatorily attend it.
The bank had shown in papers that the Pen Cooperative Urban Bank Limited was set up in 1935 and was duly registered under the provisions of Maharashtra Cooperative Sector Act, 1960. In the scam case, investors lost around Rs 758 crore. It had also disbursed loans worth Rs 758 crore to 128 individuals and companies without any paperwork or mortgage during the financial years 2008-09 and 2009-10 (September). On a query, the Bombay High Court was informed that around 94 per cent people had deposited less than Rs 1 lakh and some properties were yet to be attached after the stay order.
Somaiya, meanwhile, said that it was “a formal one-on-one meeting with a few individuals”. “It was a very primary-stage discussion, and there was nothing much to comment on. The discussion was between a few individuals. How would one know who attended the meeting?” he said when asked whether ED officials were present at the meeting.