PMC Bank crisis: ED conducting searches at premises of Waryam Singh, Joy Thomas

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is conducting searches at six places in Mumbai in relation of PMC Bank case. Among other places, ED is conducting searches at the premises of former PMC Bank Chairman Waryam Singh and former Managing Director Joy Thomas.

ED has registered ECIR on October 3 late evening. It has taken up the case on the basis of the Mumbai Police Economic Offences Wing First Information Report (FIR).

A senior ED official has confirmed about searches conducted by Enforcement Directorate.

In addition, property belonging to the company that is worth Rs 3,500 crore has been provisionally frozen in connection with the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank case.

The complaint says PMC, with a total loan size of Rs 8,880 crore, handed out 73 percent to of it to HDIL and its group companies that received 44 loans from the bank. This happens to be a huge violation in the regulations that do not allow banks to lend such a massive proportion of cash to any one sector; forget about a single company.

As per EOW, Based on the documents seized, the EOW believes that the property was mortgaged to PMC Bank. However, it is still trying to ascertain if the same property was mortgaged to any other bank.

The ongoing investigation has revealed that some employees of the PMC Bank tampered with its software. Around 44 accounts that were mentioned in the FIR did not reflect in the system and the EOW has reason to believe that these accounts were hidden using a password. The bank's staff is still being interrogated

The EOW also searched the residence of Waryam on October 3, while also freezing his demat account that is worth Rs 100 crore.

Loan amounts worth Rs 2,000 crore were also credited into the personal accounts of two directors of HDIL. There was no record of the same in the PMC's core banking solution (CBS) system.

Meanwhile, there was also a conflict of interest as PMC Bank Chairman Waryam Singh was also on the board of HDIL.

The lender has an exposure of nearly 73 percent of its loan book size to HDIL. The EOW had earlier registered an FIR against senior officials of the bank as well as HDIL.

The EOW has also appointed a special team to carry out investigations in the case.