Mumbai Police has tried to close the case.
Mumbai:
In a development pertaining to the alleged Rs 25,000-crore scam from Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB), the Mumbai Police and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are at loggerheads over the closure report filed in a court.
The city police's Economic Offences Unit (EOW) on Thursday opposed the central agency's plea against closing the case, arguing that the apex cooperative bank has not suffered any undue losses as a result of the alleged fraud.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar was named as an accused in the original case registered by the EOW.
While the police wanted to close the case because they could not establish a significant loss for the bank, the director intervened. They feared that accepting the closure report would impact their ongoing investigation into money laundering linked to the scam.
The ED has already filed prosecution charges and additional charge sheets in the case, highlighting the interconnected nature of the investigations.
The EOW filed a writ petition in the court rejecting the ED's intervention. They noted that a similar request had been rejected earlier by a special court for cases involving MPs and MLAs.
The timeline of events includes police filing a closure report in September 2020, which was initially accepted by the court.
However, further investigation was initiated in October 2022 based on protest petitions and the involvement of the ED.
The EOW filed another request to close the case in March this year, arguing that the bank had not suffered any undue losses as a result of the alleged fraud.
The FIR, which followed a Supreme Court ruling in August 2019, alleged that loans of several thousand crores obtained by sugar cooperatives, spinning mills and other entities from district and cooperative banks were diverted and not repaid.
The FIR named NCP leader Ajit Pawar as an accused, along with over 70 others who were directors of the bank during the relevant period. The charges included offences such as breach of trust and cheating.
The allegations outlined a loss of Rs 25,000 crore to the Maharashtra government between 2007 and 2017, pointing to violations of banking regulations and RBI guidelines in disbursing loans to sugar mills and the undervalued sale of defaulting corporate assets.
A former judge, appointed as an authorized officer by the cooperative's commissioner, concluded that “there was no unfair loss to the bank on account of the loans given to the factories (sugar mills)” and that “the bank recovered the amount from the factories by legal means,” the closure report said.
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