Mumbai, Jul 1 (Mid-Day): A Manager and a loan officer of the Mumbai Co-operative Bank have been arrested by the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) for disbursing loans to 22 local cooperative banks using forged documents. The authorities said that the duo had helped officials of the cooperative banks to procure loans by presenting forged documents of 837 people.

Authorities identified the manager as Appa Anand Jagtap (58) and the loan officer as Suresh Namdev Tumbre, who were working at the Kurla Kamani branch of Mumbai Cooperative Bank.

In June 2012, Mumbai Bank had lent about Rs 88.5 crore to 22 local cooperative banks located in different areas. Cops say that Rs 117 crore and 37 other banks are involved in the scam. Senior Police Inspector Vilas Kannade from Economic Offence Wing said, “During the course of our investigations, we learnt that Jagtap and the loan officer Tumbre issued loans to many co-operative banks from 2007 to 2012,” adding, “We have registered an FIR against 22 co-operative banks while 37 more co-operative banks are assumed to be involved in the case. Since, we do not have strong evidence against these banks, we have not booked them yet but they are on the radar.”

Bribe for loans
According to police officials, the two accused had taken bribes from these co-operative banks and made fake bank accounts in the name of 196. But, a source added that through interrogations the managers revealed the names of several other people in the bank without whose signatures, the loans could not have been issued.

Jagtap and Tumbre have been booked under sections 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will,) 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy).

They were produced in court on Friday and have been remanded to police custody till Tuesday.

In the past, officials from the EOW had arrested eight people working at different co-operative banks of which three had been granted bail while the others have been remanded to judicial custody.