Top bank officers nabbed for housing finance scam

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI - Top officers of some state-run banks and financial institutions were arrested by India’s federal probe agency Wednesday for allegedly accepting bribes to extend loans to corporate houses in a housing finance scam.

“In today’s raids, we have seized incriminating documents and those documents would now be further scrutinised. Meanwhile, we have registered five separate cases and the investigation is in progress,” Central Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Anurag told reporters here.

“We have arrested Ramachandran Nair, chief executive officer of LIC Housing Finance, Mumbai; Naresh K. Chopta, secretary investments, LIC, Mumbai; R.N.Tayal, general manager, Bank of India (Mumbai); and Maninder Singh Johar, director, Central Bank of India, New Delhi,” he added.

Among others who have been arrested are Venkoba Gujjal, deputy general manager of Punjab National Bank, New Delhi, and Rajesh Sharma, chairman and managing director, and two executives of Money Matters Financial Services — a Mumbai-based listed firm.

The CBI busted the racket wherein the private financial services company’s chairman and managing director and other associates were found allegedly bribing senior officers of the public sector banks for facilitating large scale corporate loans.

However, Central Bank of India denied any of its general managers has been arrested.

“No official of the Central Bank of India has been named. He is only a non-executive independent director,” said S. Sridhar, chairman and managing director of Central Bank of India.

Search operations were conducted in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata and Jalandhar based on secret information received by the bureau.

The alleged scam was going on for some time, the CBI spokesman added.

However, he did not give any specific details about the quantum of the scandal or the duration of the scam.

Reports of search and seizure operations, an hour before the closing bell at bourses, had an immediate impact, resulting in a benchmark index for Indian equities shedding around 315 points.

The 30-share sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which had opened at 19,735.28 points, closed at 19,412.78, down 279.06 points or 1.42 percent from its previous close at 19,691.84 points.

The stocks of all the listed public sector banks, tanked on the Bombay Stock Exchange, following the news.

The hardest hit among the alleged scam-hit banks and institutions was LIC Housing Finance, whose scrip nose-dived 18.32 percent at Rs.1,068.55, Central Bank of India, whose scrip plummeted 8.02 percent, and Bank of India, whose stock fell 5.88 percent.