Among those arrested are the bank’s former CEO Abhimanyu Bhoan, ex-general manager Hitesh Mehta and real estate developer Dharmesh Paun.
The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police, which is investigating the Rs 122 crore embezzlement at New India Co-operative Bank has shared some updates related to the bank’s Prabhadevi branch in the city. According to EOW, the branch could keep Rs 10 crore at a time, but the cash in hand-book showed there was Rs 122.028 crore in the safe on the day of the RBI inspection.
The Mumbai Police has already arrested three persons, including two former top executives of the bank, in this connection.
“The balance sheet at the corporate office branch was showing Rs 133.41 crore at the bank’s safe at Prabhadevi and Goregaon branches, and Rs 122.028 was the figure on the balance sheet of Prabhadevi branch on that day,” a police official was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
The police team investigating the matter found that the corporate office’s safe capacity to store cash was only Rs 10 crore. RBI’s inspection team actually found Rs 60 lakh in the vault when they visited the branch on February 11.
At the Goregaon branch safe, they found Rs 10.53 crore cash on the day of the RBI inspection, according to the official.
The official said that various CA firms audited the balance sheets, daily and the books of cash in hand but none raised an alarm.
“The EOW is now probing why auditors looking into the bank’s financial records did not raise an alarm over the missing cash from the bank, he added.
Meanwhile, the EOW has summoned representatives of half-a-dozen firms which conducted audits of the fraud-hit lender at different times, another official said.
Among those arrested are the bank’s former CEO Abhimanyu Bhoan, ex-general manager Hitesh Mehta and real estate developer Dharmesh Paun.
The police started the investigation after Devarshi Ghosh, the bank’s acting chief executive officer, lodged a complaint against Mehta and others at the Dadar police station in central Mumbai nearly two weeks ago.
