ED attaches assets worth Rs 9.97 Cr in Bhilwara co-op bank scam

New Delhi, Mar 11 (Agency) The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday said it has attached assets worth Rs 9.97 crore, in connection with the Bhilwara Mahila Urban Cooperative Bank (BMUCB) fraud case amounting to Rs 25.10 crore. Under Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), the ED attached movable and immovable properties belonging to the financial advisor of BMUCB, and his wife Kirti Bordia president of the bank and five other Bhilwara residents, the financial probe agency said in a statement. The attached properties includes four bank accounts having balance worth Rs 4.39 Lakh and 262 immovable assets worth Rs 9.92 Crore including agriculture land admeasuring 12 Bigha 2.5 Biswa, residential and commercial properties situated in Bhilwara and Asind. Money laundering investigation was initiated on the basis of FIR registered by Rajasthan Police and charge sheet has been filed in the case.

ED probe has revealed that Bordias were in active connivance with Dev Kishan Acharya, Mahaveer Chand Parakh and others obtained loans to the tune of Rs. 25.10 Crore sanctioned in name of various private persons on the basis of forged and fabricated documents and siphoned off the loan amount by transferring and utilizing the bank funds for repayment of old loans availed by them and for purchase of immovable assets. “Properties which were pledged or mortgaged with the Bank against loans do not belong to the loanees. Moreover, loanees were unaware about the loan fraudulently taken in their names and had no financial capacity to purchase the assets shown as belonging to them in the mortgage documents submitted to the Bank”, the officials in the ED said. These fraudsters had taken KYC documents and signatures of these poor persons in the guise of opening of saving bank account or some other reasons by offering small benefits to these people and misused these documents for obtaining fraudulent loans in the name of these persons, they added. Further investigation is in progress, the probe agency added.