Mumbai: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai police arrested a former manager with the State Bank of India (SBI) for allegedly committing fraud of Rs 36 crore in his own branch. The accused forged documents of one of the bank’s clients and siphoned off Fixed Deposit money.
The arrested person has been identified as Nikhil Roy (45), who used to earlier reside in Navi Mumbai, was arrested by a police team under the supervision of joint commissioner of police, EOW, Niket Kaushik. He was arrested on charges of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy and was produced before a local court in Mumbai on Tuesday, which remanded him to police custody till May 15.
According to the police, in 2019 a board of Mathadi workers had put their money (Rs 45 crores) in a Fixed Deposit in the Mazgaon branch of SBI. Roy was manager in the said branch. The board had kept money as FD for a period of two years with a condition that there should not be any lien or mortgage.
“Around 20 days after the FD was started, a bogus document of the board with fake signatures of chairman and secretary of the board was submitted in the bank stating that the money needs to be transferred in some particular bank accounts from the FD account. Rs 36 crore were transferred to other accounts within a span of 45 days from the FD account,” said an EOW officer.
He added, when the board officials were later informed by the bank that their FD was broken and then the fraud came to light. A criminal offence was registered by the board against Roy in June 2019.
The bank had also initiated an internal enquiry in which Roy was found guilty. “Roy’s role was very clear in the fraud. The FD was opened with certain conditions and if there was a request to premature break the FD, then the manager should have contacted the client and verify the said information. In this case nothing of this sort was done. An official from the board would visit the bank once every three months to check the status on FD. When a board official had made his first visit to the bank after opening the FD, Roy had given him a letter stating that FD was intact. But the fact was that he had already transferred some amount of money from the FD to other accounts,” the officer said.
During the course of investigation, the police had managed to trace and recover Rs 13 crore and had earlier arrested five persons, who were beneficiaries of the money, but Roy remained at large.
“We had received information that Roy would be arriving in Pune to meet his wife. Subsequently, a watch was kept near the rental accommodation of his wife and Roy was nabbed on Monday. Roy used to stay at different places in Maharashtra such as Shirdi and Nashik to avoid being caught,” the officer said.
Source link
