The Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police on Friday arrested Joy Thomas, the managing director of the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank, in connection with its investigations into the loans advanced by the bank to the Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) group. Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate, too, registered an offence in the matter on Friday.
The EOW had on Monday registered an FIR in connection with the matter, after it came to light that the bank had sustained losses to the tune of 4355 crore after advancing loans to the HDIL group in a fraudulent manner. On Thursday, Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan, the directors of the HDIL group, were arrested by the agency.
According to EOW officials, Mr Thomas was brought in for questioning at around 6.15 p.m. on Friday and was placed under arrest after being grilled for around an hour.
“Inquiries so far indicate that some officials of the Bank had approached Mr Thomas after the crisis started and asked him to come clean about the cover up regarding the fraudulent loans. When he refused, they approached the Reserve Bank of India,” a senior EOW officer said.
The officer said that the 44 accounts that are currently under scrutiny effectively became Non Performing Assets (NPAs) in 2012 but were still shown as Performing Assets in the bank's recoords till 2017. A team of forensic auditors is currently going through the Bank's financial records to ascertain whether the value of losses sustained by the bank, as mentioned in the FIR, is accurate. The team is also finding out if HDIL used the money obtained from the Bank to pay off its other debts.
“We have provisionally attached four properties belonging to Mr Thomas on Friday. We will also be calling the Chief Financial Officer of HDIL and others from their finance department for questioning,” the officer said.
Meanwhile, PMC chairman Wariyam Singh has now gone missing, officers said.
“We had sent him a notice asking him to appear for inquiries, but he has not responded to it yet. We are trying to locate him,” the officer said.
On Friday morning, the ED registered an offence against PMC and HDIL officers under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and conducted searches at six locations in Mumbai connected to both the institutions.
