KANNUR: The police on Friday arrested ten persons, including the former president, secretary, director board members and manager of the service cooperative bank at Valapattanam, near here, in connection with fraudulent transactions to the tune of Rs 10 crore. The fraud took place in 2013 into which an investigation was on for the last two years, according to police. Kannur DySP P.P. Sadanandan told DC that the fraudsters applied novel methods to violate the system and siphon off crores of rupees. “More arrests are likely in the case,” he added.
The modus operandi was to show an inflated value of lands pledged in the bank through which an amount of Rs 3.6 crore was illegally sanctioned for customers. Moreover, using the same documents fake land documents were doctored with which huge sums of loans were sanctioned. In another method, an amount of Rs 1.6 crore was siphoned off by the accused by re-pledging in other banks the gold ornaments pledged in the bank by the customers. Another fraud was sanctioning an amount of Rs 1.5 crore to the kith and kin on the surety of blank cheque leaves.
Loans were distributed to all and sundry on the surety of fake documents. Four persons were arrested in a complaint filed by Noorjahan, 46, wife of Abdurahman, a native of Vadakara who came to know that an amount of Rs 25,000 was sanctioned as loan in her name without her knowledge. The incident took place on September 15, 2012. The anomalies were pointed out by the auditing wing of the cooperative department way back in 2013. Most of the accused were workers and leaders of IUML and Congress. Those arrested were remanded in judicial custody by the court.
