Ex-MD of PMC Bank asked staff to conceal info on 20,149 fake accounts, says EOW

The former managing director of the fraud-hit Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank allegedly instructed an employee to create a list of fake records for 20,149

The former managing director of the fraud-hit Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank allegedly instructed an employee to create a list of fake records for 20,149 dormant and fictitious accounts in order to hide bad loan accounts from the Reserve Bank of India, revealed the economic offences wing of (EOW) Mumbai Police.

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The EOW probe has found that Joy Thomas, former managing director of PMC Bank, had used 20,149 loan accounts to camouflage Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited’s (HDIL) 44 defaulting loan accounts. Despite non-payment, PMC Bank officials did not declare HDIL’s exposure as bad loans.

An officer from the special investigation team (SIT) probing the PMC Bank case, said they have recorded the statement of a PMC Bank employee who had been instructed by Thomas to compile a list of the 20,149 defaulting loan accounts.

“The employee, a witness in the case, told us that last year he created Excel sheets of dormant bank accounts, which were closed for various reasons,” said the officer. Some of these account holders had passed away, some accounts were fictitious and most had been closed. “The list [of accounts] was then sent to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to hide HDIL’s bad loan accounts,” said the officer, adding that this employee’s statement would help establish charges of dishonest intention on Thomas’s part.

Thomas, along with PMC Bank’s chairperson Waryam Singh and HDIL promoters Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan and Sarang Wadhawan were named as accused in the first information filed by Mumbai Police on October 1. All four are in the EOW’s custody.

“Thomas has been lodged in the Azad Maidan police station lock up, while Rakesh Kumar and Sarang Wadhwan and Waryam Singh have been lodged in the crime branch unit-1 lock up in Crawford Market,” said an EOW official.

The EOW also provisionally attached more immovable properties worth Rs 500 crore, taking the total properties seized in the case to around Rs. 4,000 crore. The properties provisionally attached on Monday are in the form of bank accounts, demat account and some immovable properties. “We have found few more bank accounts linked to the case and also seized additional properties,” said Rajvardhan Sinha, joint commissioner of police (EOW).