Ex-banker gets 10 yrs jail for Rs 2.5 cr fraud

New Delhi: A special CBI court in Maharashtra has convicted a former Branch Manager of Bank of Maharashtra along with a private person for misappropriating bank funds to the tune of over Rs 2.56 crore while the banker was posted at five different branches of the bank in different positions over a period of eight years, officials here said.

The former banker, Shaliwahan Solegaonkar has been sentenced to 10 years in prison with a fine of Rs 24 lakh while his co-conspirator Rakesh Jadhav has been sentenced to three years of imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 10,000.

Interestingly, Solegaonkar had started misappropriating bank funds from the time he was a Clerk at the Bank of Maharashtra's Sahakar Nagar Branch. According to the CBI's investigation in the case, Solegaonkar had started siphoning off funds from the Bank General Ledger and continued after becoming Deputy Manager in Sahakar Nagar Branch.

In fact, according to the CBI, Solegaonkar did the same when he was posted as Deputy Manager in the Lavale and Lasurne branches of the bank and also when he was posted as a Manager in the Hadapsar Industrial Estate and Talegaon Dhamdhere branches.

The central agency has said that Solegaonkar had first transferred the bank funds in small quantities to the Savings account of Jadhav and had then transferred the money from Jadhav's account to his own account, maintained at the Sahakar Nagar and Vadgaon Budruk branches.