Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has filed a chargesheet before a special anti-graft court at Jammu against thirty-one persons in a ₹ 1,100 crore loan scam in the state-owned J&K Bank Limited.
Among the accused are Sandip Jhunjhunwala, a businessman of Delhi who is the managing director of REI Agro Limited, Muhammad Yousaf Bhat, the then branch head of the J&K bank at Mahim, Mumbai and other 29 others including bank officials.
The case registered by the ACB in 2019 under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and J&K Public Company Act pertains to allegedly sanctioning and disbursing crop loans to the tune of ₹ 400 crores, term loan of ₹ 150 crores from J&K Bank branch Mahim and bill discounting facilities to the tune of ₹ 115 crores from J&K Bank Vasant Vihar (Delhi) branch in favour of Messer’s REI Agro Limited “without tangible securities and in violation of banking norms”.
“Investigation has revealed that the said REI Agro Ltd its Chairman and Managing Director had no intention of repaying the loans to the bank. The sole purpose from the very beginning was to swindle the funds obtained,” the chargesheet says. It adds, “The company with the malafide intention to cheat the J&K Bank hatched a conspiracy with its officers and some private persons representing as JLGs (Joint Liability Groups) created fictitious lists of farmers who were non-existent under each JLG group and got the loan funds credited directly in the accounts of these JLGs who later diverted the funds back to the borrower company M/s REI Agro Ltd without crediting it to any farmers account”.
It further said that these loans were sanctioned “with malafide intention in violation of banking norms in order to confer undue benefit upon the promoters of the company and JLGs”.
