A third auditor was arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police in the Rs 4,355-crore Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank fraud case on Tuesday. This is the eighth arrest in the case. Investigators suspect that the auditors have received Rs 40-60 lakh from the accused to overlook fraudulent banking practices linked to the bank’s biggest client, Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL).
The latest arrest was of Anita Shankar Kirdat, 48, a chartered accountant (CA) from Bhandup, who runs a firm, Anita Kirdat & Company. She has served as the concurrent auditor of PMC bank from 2005 to 2019. Kirdat, who was appointed at the behest of the main accused, former MD of the bank Joy Thomas, ex-chairman Waryam Singh and HDIL’s directors Rakesh Wadhawan and Sarang Wadhawan, was associated with HDIL. However, the nature of her association with HDIL was not revealed by EOW.
She allegedly did not observe any discrepancies in the financial affairs of the bank and shielded HDIL’s NPA (non-performing asset) accounts from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) scanner for a long period.
Meanwhile, the EOW on Wednesday questioned four RBI officials who had inspected PMC Bank’s financial affairs.