Former managing director of Punjab Maharashtra Cooperative Bank, Joy Thomas, was arrested on Friday in connection with the alleged Rs 4,355 crore scam at the bank by the Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai Police.
Thomas was summoned to the EOW office at the city police headquarters and arrested after questioning, a police official said.
Thomas had, on Wednesday, penned a five-page letter to the RBI where he confessed to the role of top management at PMC in hiding the accumulated Non-Performing Assets (NPA) of Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) via the use of 21,049 dummy accounts. HDIL reportedly owes PMC nearly Rs 6,500 crore.
On Thursday, EOW had arrested HDIL directors Rakesh Wadhawan and his son Sarang Wadhawan in the case. Rakesh was the executive chairman of HDIL while Sarang was a managing director.
They were arrested by the special investigation team (SIT) of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police on Thursday and produced before a local court on Friday. EOW had registered an FIR on Monday against senior officials of HDIL and the PMC Bank for allegedly causing losses to the tune of Rs 4,355.43 crore to the bank.
Property of Rs 3,500 crore belonging to the company was seized by the EOW during the investigation, he said. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has also initiated an investigation by registering a case of money laundering, another official said, with ED officials raiding six places in the city and suburbs, collecting important documents related to the case.
The RBI, on Thursday, raised the withdrawal limit for depositors at PMC to Rs 25,000, in a move they said would allow over 70 per cent of depositors at the bank to withdraw their entire savings.
On Friday, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das sought to assure the public that the state of the Indian banking sector was safe, and that the RBI would not allow Indian cooperative banks to fall.
With inputs from PTI
