50 places raided, 17 cases registered: CBI's 'special drive' against bank fraudsters
New Delhi: In a major crackdown against rising reports of bank frauds, the CBI blitzed through more than 50 locations, conducting searches in over 20 cities across the country on Tuesday. The bank fraud cases adds up to approximately Rs 1,114.06 crore, officials here said.
Calling it a "special drive" against bank fraud cases, the Central Bureau of Investigation registered 17 separate cases of bank fraud, one of which pertains to absconding diamond merchant Jatin Mehta of Winsome Diamonds, which is already embroiled in a bank fraud of over Rs 6,000 crore. This brings the total number of cases against Mehta's Winsome Diamonds to 16 as of now.
In addition to booking more than 17 companies in these cases, the CBI has also implicated a number of bank officials who were allegedly complicit in the crimes and in some cases conspired with the accused to defraud the banks.
CBI sleuths swooped-in on the premises of the accused companies, their directors, and in some cases implicated bank officials, recovering a large number of documents, electronic storage devices, and in some cases, keys to personal lockers. At one of the locations, agency officials also recovered Rs 10 lakh in cash.
The searches were conducted in cities such as Mumbai, Ludhiana, New Delhi, Palani, Thirupur, Kolar, Bengaluru, Gaya, Gurugram, Aligarh, Chandigarh, Bhavanigarh, Fazilka, Muktsar, Bhopa, Surat, Bhuvaneshwar, Puri, Raigarh, North 24 Parganas and Pune among others. The raids in some of the 17 cases are still underway, officials here added.
While most of the cases registered pertain to small amounts of bank fraud ranging from Rs 5 crore to around Rs 200 crore, committed by small firms in the textile, trading, and food industry, a co-ordinated action of this sort comes as part of a regular clean-up by the CBI in investigating cases of bank fraud.
With this decisive action, the total number of bank fraud cases registered by the CBI in 2019, so far has come up to 31, with the total amount approximately Rs 8,587.05 crore.
