Thrissur: While the Revenue Department is recovering Rs 125.83 crore from the accused persons involved in the Rs 300-crore fraud that occurred in the Karuvannur Cooperative Bank in Thrissur, the remaining Rs 175 crore remains unaccounted.
Allegations are rife that political pressure had been exerted to reduce the liability of the accused to Rs 125 crore by claiming that there is no apparent evidence of their involvement in the crime, even though a forensic examination of the accounts by three senior auditors over a period of two years had found that there was an embezzlement of Rs 300 crore from the bank.
There are also indications that this is part of attempts being made to play down the extent of the fraud. Revenue recovery proceedings were started in March last, based on the report of the Joint Registrar of Cooperatives, after no one repaid the money even after they were given sufficient time to do so.
Although investigations, including that conducted by the Crime Branch, had found that there were large-scale fraudulent operations in giving loans and accepting deposits under the two governing boards of the CPM in the Karuvannur bank from 2014, only members of the second governing board and bank employees have been listed as the accused.
District Collector V R Krishna Teja ordered recovery of Rs 125.83 crore from 24 of these persons. Among them, only members of the governing board have been imposed amounts proportional to the defrauded amount. Commission agent Bijoy, who has been found to have perpetrated a fraud of Rs 35.65 crore, has been asked to pay back only Rs 20.72 lakh.
Similarly, while it was found that the bank manager, Biju Karim, had swindled the bank of Rs 25.85 crore, has to repay only Rs 12.16 crore. C K Jills, former accountant of the bank, who had embezzled Rs 5.73 crore, will have to pay back only Rs 19.99 lakh. The official explanation is that evidence of their culpability in the fraud has been found only to the extent of these amounts.
However, even if Rs 125 crore is realised through revenue recovery, that will not be a solution to the distress of the depositors of the Karuvannur Bank who have lost their money.
The bank has to repay around Rs 141 crore to investors in just the different deposit schemes. There are other categories of depositors too. There are also cases of people being saddled with the liability of repaying loans that they had never taken.
The present situation is such that Rs 175 crore that had been embezzled through various ways including the purported loans, remains accountant for. The liability of the accused came down to Rs 125 crore close on the heels of the extent of the embezzlement being pegged at Rs 227 crore in the Crime Branch investigation into the Rs 300-crore fraud.
MV Suresh, the petitioner in the case and chairman of the Janakeeya Prathirodha Samithi (People’s Resistance Forum) alleged that there was a political conspiracy behind the reduction of the liability of the accused to Rs 125 crore. The figures in the report of the Joint Registrar are wrong, he said. The fraud was being perpetuated by reducing the liability of the accused, Suresh said.
Bijoy invested loot in Dubai and China? ED to investigate
It is learnt that commission agent, A K Bijoy, who swindled money from the Karuvannur Cooperative Bank, invested the money in Dubai, China, Singapore, and Thailand. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is scrutinising in detail the travels undertaken by Bijoy to these places.
The links Bijoy has with the business that his relative is running in China are also under investigation.
