The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police on Thursday made three more arrests in connection its investigations into the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank fraud, bringing the total number of arrests to 15.
The EOW has been investigating the alleged malpractices by the bank’s officials in granting large amounts of money in loans to the Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) Group and doctoring its books to hide the fact when the loans became non performing assets (NPAs). The EOW’s inquiries so far estimate the unpaid debts at ₹4,635.62 crore.
According to EOW officers, the three have been identified as Jasvinder Singh Banwait, Vishwanatha Prabhu, and Govind Jere. Mr. Banwait is a former director of the bank, while the other two work with Yardi Prabhu Consultants and Valuers, and were valuers of the PMC Bank for several years.
“Mr. Banwait has served as a director and a member of the loans, investment and executive committee of the PMC Bank. He was questioned about the loans granted to HDIL and what efforts were made to recover the outstanding loans,” an officer said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Prabhu and Mr. Jere were quizzed about the inconsistencies that came to light in the EOW’s own evaluation of the bank’s assets in 2012 and 2015, and the evaluation submitted by the duo.
“Inquiries revealed that the duo deliberately presented inflated valuations of the bank’s assets to maintain its capital adequacy. As per the rules set by the Reserve Bank of India, every bank needs to have a specific amount of capital available at its disposal to deal with any crisis, like a large loan turning into an NPA,” the officer said.
The trio were questioned about their roles in the fraud and when none of them could provide satisfactory replies, they were arrested. After being produced in court, they were remanded in police custody till March 16.
The EOW had earlier arrested 12 people, including high ranking members of the PMC Bank’s board of directors, and Sarang and Rakesh Wadhawan, the promoters of HDIL.
