CBI detects 2.6L fake accounts in Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana

New Delhi: As the Bharatiya Janata Party continues to aggressively promote the Centre's Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, especially in light of the upcoming Assembly polls, the Central Bureau of Investigation has now registered a case against public officials and promoters of the scam-ridden DHFL Group for gaming the scheme and re-routing over Rs 11,000 crore by creating 2.6 lakh fake and fictitious PMAY loan accounts.

The central probe agency's FIR names promoters Dheeraj and Kapil Wadhawan along with the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL) and public officials involved in disbursing interest subsidies for loans granted under the scheme.

According to the CBI, both Dheeraj and Kapil Wadhawan had set up a fictitious branch of their public lending outfit known as the Bandra branch, where a database was allegedly set up under names of people who had already repaid their loans and interest amounts. The probe agency alleged that a total of 2.6 lakh "fake and fictitious" accounts were opened at this Bandra branch, under whose names housing loans worth Rs 14,046 crore were paid out to purported "beneficiaries" between 2007 and 2019.

Of this amount, the agency alleged Rs 11,755.79 crore was deposited in and routed to several fictitious firms known as Bandra Book firms.

The CBI added that they had received source information of these bogus accounts being opened up to siphon interest subsidies for loan amounts under the PMAY scheme and that the involvement of officials of the National Housing Bank (NHB) was likely in the case.

The CBI, in its FIR, said that a large part of this information was revealed to them based on the findings of a forensic audit report prepared by Grant Thorton to look into the massive financial irregularities and criminal dealings of the DHFL with top-notch financial institutions.

Interestingly, the DHFL, as an authorised lender under the PMAY scheme, had said that it had processed a total of 88,651 cases under the housing scheme until December 2018, from which it claimed interest subsidies worth a total of Rs 1,887.20 crore. The CBI FIR says that of this, Rs 539.40 crore in interest subsidies had already been paid to DHFL by 2018.

In this entire scheme of things, the National Housing Bank comes in at the interest subsidies part.

Under this scheme, financial institutions are first approved to lend using their name and then these institutions send in their claims for the requisite interest subsidies for loans granted under the scheme to the National Housing Bank, which gets this amount reimbursed by the Union government as per budgetary allocations.

As per the scheme, interest subsidies under the PMAY scheme range from 3 per cent to 6.5 per cent per annum payable upfront with a cap of Rs 2,30,156 to Rs 2,67,280 depending on the category of the borrower.

The maximum loan amount eligible under the scheme is Rs 24 lakh.