Samata Bank chairman, directors booked

The auditors examined the bank's records between March 30, 1997, and October 30, 2007, and pegged the loss at a little over Rs 145 crore.

Besides the 21 directors, including the chairman of the bank, D S Chimurkar, four of its officials were also booked under various Sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to fraud, deceit and cheating.

 

The police sources alleged that the bank's officers and directors took huge commissions and favours for sanctioning unsecured loans to many clients, most of which have gone bad.

The directors had also taken huge loans from the Samta Sahakari Bank and defaulted on repayment.

Sources said some of the bank's directors were also the key accused in the Nagpur Mahila Sahakari Bank case. The bad loans of the Mahila Sahakari Bank had led to the intervention of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which placed the bank under moratorium.

The Samta Bank fraud has rocked the region and is considered much bigger than the Rs 125-crore gilts scam involving the Nagpur District Central Cooperative Bank, which led to the arrest of local legislator Sunil Kedar.

The Hemani couple, one of the accused in the Samata Bank case, was arrested last year in connection with the Mahila Bank scam and is currently behind bars.

The Sitabuldi police have filed an FIR against D S Chimurkar, A A Desai, E D Hawre, R R Mishra, Rita Parashar, T K Mukherjee, M J Balbudhe, N V Shrinivas, K R Durugkar, S N Pinjarkar, A A Bondre, S N Narkhede, A K Brahme, Sunil M Balbudhe, N M Tirpude, Milind Chimukar, Prabhakar Samarth, Prakash Bhisikar, Amit N Karira, Omprakash Chandak and G P Selukar.

The four officials of the bank include its CEO P B Choudhari, chief accounts officer Rohini Kulkarni, branch manager Sanjay Deshpande and special recovery officer Keshav Kamle.

Sources said some of the big business groups of the region such as the Naval Harshal Group, Vijay Kher-led trading and film distribution company, Narkhede, Chandrakant Gade, Mohammed Sajid, Ashok Potbhare, Mohit Ved, Praful Vaidya, Shivaji Meshram, Hemani, Suchitra Traders and 15 others had been sanctioned unsecured loans to the tune of over Rs 100 crore.