32,000-Page Charge Sheet Filed Against Five Accused In PMC Bank Case
PMC Bank’s former top executives and HDIL’s promoters have been named in the charge sheet.
The economic offences wing of Mumbai Police on Friday submitted to a metropolitan magistrate court a 32,000-page charge sheet against five persons in the multi-crore PMC Bank scam.
The five accused are:
- Joy Thomas, former managing director at PMC Bank
- Wayram Singh, former chairman at PMC Bank
- Surjit SIngh Arora, former director at PMC Bank
- Rakesh Wadhwan, promoter of HDIL.
- Sarang Wadhawan, promoter of HDIL.
They have been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code including cheating, fraud, destruction of evidence and falsification of documents.
All the five accused were arrested soon after the scam at Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank came to light in September. They are currently in judicial custody.
Apart from these five, the police has also arrested seven other bank officials, and supplementary charge sheet will be filed against them later.
The 32,000-page charge sheet includes the forensic audit report of PMC Bank and documents of properties purchased by the accused bank officials with kickbacks received by them for giving undue favour to HDIL and the Wadhawans.
The charge sheet has statements of 340 witnesses, including account holders in the bank. The police had recorded the statements of four crucial witnesses before a magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The PMC Bank fraud came to light after the Reserve Bank of India discovered that the lender had allegedly created fictitious accounts to hide over Rs 6,700 crore in loans extended to the almost-bankrupt Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd.
According to RBI, PMC Bank masked 44 problematic loan accounts, including those of HDIL, by tampering with its core banking system, and the accounts were accessible only to limited staff members.
The city police's EOW and Enforcement Directorate has registered offences in the case.
On Sept. 23, 2019, the central bank had imposed regulatory restrictions on the bank. The withdrawal limit for account holders was initially kept at Rs 1,000 per day, which was increased gradually to Rs 50,000.