‘BSP netas used bank to launder cash’
From Times of India
NEW DELHI: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has filed a criminal case in Lucknow's chief judicial magistrate's court against directors and the CEO of a cooperative bank —Indian Mercantile Cooperative Bank Ltd — for alleged money laundering worth hundreds of crores involving fictitious entities.
The bank is linked to BSP Rajya Sabha MP Akhilesh Das Gupta. His wife, Alka, a former head of the bank who is still on its board, has been made a respondent by the RBI. Some of the suspicious transactions involve BSP leaders. The BSP leaders have strongly disputed the contents of the report.
TOI has a copy of the RBI inspection report.
The case was taken up by other investigating agencies after Intelligence Bureau, which ran its own checks, alerted the finance ministry to a suspected money laundering racket running into thousands of crores.
In any case, RBI's findings were alarming enough, with the central bank reporting a series of transactions where crores were deposited and withdrawn, with the bank allegedly failing to meet the requirement of checking the antecedents of the account holders.
The RBI report suspects that fictitious entities were engaged in transactions which in many cases involved more than Rs 10 crore. Subsequent efforts to trace the account holders failed.
Significantly, many of the transactions date to the BSP government in UP. One of these relates to BSP chief Mayawati's close aide Satish Chandra Mishra. The RBI report alleged that the bank provided undue benefits to the BSP leader in Rajya Sabha, foregoing a significant part of the Rs 2 crore loan he was given. It also alleged that Mishra was given the loan even when his papers were not in order and when he pledged a property different from the one which was supposed to be the collateral.
"The bank had sanctioned Rs 2 crore but as per repayment schedule, total recovery would be only Rs 30 lakh in five years and for the same loan account the bank had not followed the share linking norms," the RBI's inspection report said.
When contacted, Mishra strongly refuted the charge and threatened to proceed against RBI. The BSP leader said he had taken a loan from the Indian Mercantile Bank and had mortgaged his Windsor Place property, the worth of which was more than the loan amount.
"They were charging exorbitant rate of interest and thus I decided to pay off and settle my account. It was done long ago," Mishra said, expressing surprise as to how the RBI could make such an unfair observation when he had already paid off what he had borrowed.
His colleague Akhilesh Das also denied RBI's finding that the bank facilitated irregular transactions by firms belonging to him. "I am not connected with the bank," he said, declining to get into the specifics of RBI's findings against his firms.
RBI refused to respond to Mishra's charge of unfairness by saying that the matter was sub judice.
RBI has also made scathing observations against the then registrar of cooperative societies, Uttar Pradesh for not informing the Financial Intelligence Unit.
The RBI report alleged that the cooperative bank "reluctantly provided files of large borrowers with inordinate delay". The delay led RBI to suspect that the time so gained could have been utilized to fabricate papers. The central bank has put its fear on record. "It appeared that most of the loan applications were filled in by the same set of persons as the handwriting on the applications was almost similar," it said.
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