This story is from June 12, 2017

EOW arrests three in Koraput bank fraud case

The economic offences wing (EOW) of state Crime Branch here on Monday arrested three main accused involved in alleged misappropriation of nearly Rs four crore in Koraput Central Cooperative Bank’s branch at Kalimela in Malkangiri district.
EOW arrests three in Koraput bank fraud case
Representative image.
BHUBANESWAR: The economic offences wing (EOW) of state Crime Branch here on Monday arrested three main accused involved in alleged misappropriation of nearly Rs four crore in Koraput Central Cooperative Bank’s branch at Kalimela in Malkangiri district.
The accused were identified as Ramesh Chandra Parmanik, former branch manager, Kishore Chandra Bisoi, ex-accountant and Bhupendra Narayan Mohanty, ex-cashier.
An internal audit by the bank in 2014-15 detected the alleged misappropriation of money between 2013 and 2014, EOW sources said. The state cooperation minister Surjya Narayan Patro recently entrusted the EOW to probe the case. The trio were suspended recently in the wake of the audit finding.
“We found that the accused sanctioned irregular and illegal loans of Rs 3.69 crore to make fake beneficiaries. We suspect the accused pocketed the money by producing forged loan records,” special director general (crime) B K Sharma said.
Three separate teams, consisting 10 EOW personnel have been formed to find to whether any genuine persons were granted loans through fake documents. “As of now, we suspect the loan beneficiaries never existed. Fake documents were created in fictitious names and the money was bungled by the accused. Still, we will examine if any loan was sanctioned to people after receiving forged documents from them,” Sharma said. “We will identify other accused persons, if any and trace the misappropriated public money,” Sharma added.
A few days ago, Jeypore Congress MLA Tara Prasad Bahinipati staged dharna outside the bank’s head office at Jeypore, demanding CBI probe into the scam. Bahinipati was immediately unavailable for comment over the arrest of the three key functionaries of the bank.
Earlier Bahinipati alleged the bank officials embezzled the public money by sanctioning the loan in favour of fake self-help groups. Bahinipati said the bank sanctioned the loan in the names of over 400 farmers, who had no inkling of the loan. The bank’s branches are spread across Malkangiri and Nabarangapur districts. While Bahinipati has been demanding probe into financial transactions in all branches, EOW said their investigation is limited to the bank’s Kalimela branch only. “The cooperation minister asked us to probe the Kalimela branch case only,” an EOW officer said.
author
About the Author
Debabrata Mohapatra

Debabrata Mohapatra is a senior correspondent at The Times of India, Bhubaneswar. He holds a PG diploma in Journalism from Chennai and covers crime and civic issues. Debabrata spends his leisure reading and watching cricket on TV.

End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA