CBI registers case against 3 former Union Bank officers, others for Rs 24.17cr loan fraud

The CBI Wednesday registered cases against three former senior officials of the Union Bank of India (UBI) and a few others on the charge of causing a loss of over Rs 24 crore to the nationalised bank.

Apart from the three bank officers, six builders and 44 borrowers were also booked in the Rs 24.17 crore loan fraud case of 2017.

The three senior officers are the then chief manager of UBI Nayapalli Branch, Bhubaneswar Mohapatra, the then assistant manager Ashwini Kumar Patra and the then manager Rajah Kumar Patanga, official sources said.

The six builders have been identified as Uma Shankar Patro, Anuradha Patro, Puspanjali Patro, Biswanath Jena, Kamala Rani Jena and Aditya Kumar Jena.

None of the accused persons were available for comment.

A statement released by the investigating agency said that the accused persons allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy among themselves in 2017 and abused their official positions in the matter of processing/sanction/disbursal of housing loans.

The borrowers and the builders are also accused of submitting false and fictitious documents, including false ITRs (income tax returns) and defective KYC documents, and the same were dishonestly processed by the bank officials without any verification which is in violation with the bank guidelines, the CBI statement said.

The accused ex-senior officials also accepted incomplete credit documentation and did not obtain approved plan or legal scrutiny or search report before sanctioning loan amounts, it said.

The then senior officials released entire loan amounts to the accused builders (on behalf of borrowers) without ensuring completion of construction of the houses, the central agency added.

"The disbursed loan amounts were allegedly diverted by the accused builders for other purposes," an official source said.

The investigating agency had conducted searches at the residences and offices of bank officials and builders in Bhubaneswar, Puri and Raigada in Odisha on Tuesday which led to recovery of documents, sources said.