According to the information available, the fine has been imposed for non-compliance with its ‘know your customer’ guidelines.
Days after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed business restrictions on the Mumbai-headquartered New India Co-Operative Bank and superseded the lender’s board citing governance lapses, one more co-operative faced action as the Central Bank has imposed a Rs 1 lakh penalty on the Magadh Central Co-operative Bank Ltd, Bihar.
According to the information available, the fine has been imposed for non-compliance with its ‘know your customer’ guidelines.
The lender had failed to put in place a system for carrying out a periodic review of risk categorisation of accounts at least once in six months, as per an official statement.
Meanwhile, at least a half dozen former directors of New India Cooperative Bank have told investigators during an ongoing probe that they were unaware about the alleged Rs 122-crore embezzlement at the fraud-hit lender, Mumbai police officials said on Monday.
These directors have claimed they had no role in the alleged fraud which came to light last month, they said.
The Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW), probing the alleged illegal withdrawal of Rs 122 crore from the bank’s treasury over five years since 2020, had summoned seven former directors of the bank as part of its probe.
These included Frederick D’Sa, Gauri Hiren Bhanu, Kurush Paghdiwalla, Milan Kothary, Shiv Kathuria, Viren Barot, and Vinit Upadhyay, an official said.
Gauri Bhanu, who once headed the bank, is shown as an wanted accused in the case along with her husband Hiren Bhanu, a former chairman, he said.
Of the seven directors covered as part of the probe, 6 have told the EOW they were unaware of the embezzlement of cash from the bank for which former General Manager Hiten Mehta and ex-CEO Abhimanyu Bhoan are among four persons arrested so far, according to the official.
Some of them have recorded their statements before police, he said.
With PTI inputs
