Govt action against DCC Bank ex-directors ahead of civic polls

Days before polls in Congress-NCP ruled Kolhapur Municipal Corporation, Maharashtra government, in an apparent attempt to dent the Opposition's image, has ordered to initiate action against then directors of Kolhapur District Cooperative Bank for alleged misuse of funds.
Most of the then bank directors, where an alleged misuse of about Rs 147 crore took place, were from Opposition parties, including former Congress minister Satej Patil, ex-NCP minister Hasan Mushrif and former MLA Vinay Kore.
State Cooperation Minister Chandrakant Patil confirmed that his department has issued a notice to recover the amount of loan that was approved by alleged violation of rules.

"The then board of directors of Kolhapur District Cooperative Central Bank (DCC) had sanctioned loans to various individuals and cooperative organisations to the tune of Rs 147 crore. The way the money was sanctioned was illegal and in many cases no guarantor or collateral security was taken against the loans," Patil said.
Cooperation Department's Regional Assistant Director Sachin Rawal was assigned to conduct an investigation on the loan allocation.
It was revealed that loans were sanctioned and disbursed during 2002-03 and 2006-07. Later, based on Rawal's report, Cooperation department's divisional deputy registrar Rajendrakumar Darade issued notices to the then 45 directors, via rule 88 of the Cooperation Act, to fix responsibility on each of them.

The auditor submitted its report to Cooperation department on January 23 this year.
According to a department official, the directors challenged the contents of the report and filed an appeal before the Cooperation minister as he has quasi-judicial powers of hearing.
However, Patil rejected appeal of the directors and retained the department's order to recover Rs 147,01,42,423 from the 45 directors and then managing director of DCC Bank.