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PMC Bank Crisis


                             About PMC Bank: Punjab and         Again  in  2004,  Rakesh’s  elder  brother  Rajesh
                             Maharashtra Cooperative Bank       Wadhawan deposited more than 100 crores to help
                             founded  in  1984,  has  137       the bank tide over the liquidity crunch. After that
                             branches across seven states, 81   HDIL started banking with PMC and more than
                             of  these  in  Mumbai,Navi         60% transactions of bank were from this group.
                             Mumbai,  Thane,  Palghar           After HDIL became a listed company in 2007, it
                             regions, 10 in Pune and 12 in the   cleared all the dues of PMC and moved on to other
             Kirti Nandrekar  rest  of  Maharashtra.  Its       banks as its requirements of capital had become
           customers  include  small  businesses,  housing      manifold.
           societies and institutions.
                                                                Later, PMC bank approached and requested HDIL
           Punjab  and  Maharashtra  Cooperative  Bank          to  continue  banking  with  it  as  it  has  started
           (PMC Bank) has been facing regulatory actions        impacting profitability of bank, as a huge portion of
           and  investigation  over  alleged  irregularities  in   advances were repaid by the company. So, HDIL
           certain loan accounts. Loans given to financially     again started their operations with bank after 5-6
           stressed real estate player Housing Development &    months.
           Infrastructure  (HDIL)  are  at  the  centre  of  the
                                                                In 2011-2013, the infrastructure developer suffered
           investigation.
                                                                a series of setbacks at their projects, and started
           On September 24, 2019, the Reserve Bank of India     facing liquidity crunch, hence defaulting on” all
           (RBI)  placed  restraints  on  the  activities  of  the   dues of all the banks”.
           Mumbai-based bank for six months. The central
                                                                As the loans outstanding were huge and if these
           bank  also  limited  the  amount  a  customer  could
                                                                were classified as NPA it would have affected the
           withdraw from their account during the next six
                                                                profitability of the bank, it would face regulatory
           months - from Rs 1,000 at first, and later to Rs
                                                                action from RBI. Also the bank continued to report
           25,000.
                                                                all accounts as standard accounts, though some of
           The  Enforcement  Directorate  has  filed  a  money   the accounts were not performing well. This was
           laundering case in the PMC Bank scam.                not  brought  to  the  notice  of  the  board.  The
           According  to  the  bank’s  2018-19  annual  report,   subsequent over dues of various loans were also not
           PMC’s percentage of gross NPA to gross advances      reported to the board.
           is 3.76 % while net NPA to net advances is 2.19%
           for the year ended March 31. The total deposits
           stand at Rs 11,617.34 crore.

           The letter states that the stressed legacy accounts
           belonging  to  HDIL  group  were  replaced  with
           dummy accounts to match the outstanding balances
           in  the  balance  sheet.  While  the  loans  were
           mentioned as loans against depositors and were of
           lower amounts, they were not checked by the RBI.
           HDIL-PMC  Bank  History    PMC  Bank
           relationship with HDIL started in 1986-87 when the
           bank had come on the state of closure due to some
           “unlawful deeds of some of the borrowers”, at that
           time Rakesh Wadhawan (present director of HDIL)      Since the bank was growing, statutory auditors, due
           and many other companies run by Deewan family        to  their  time  constraints  checked  only  the
           came  to  the  rescue  of  the  bank.  They  invested   incremental advances, and not the entire operations
           capital and saved the bank.                          in the account. They scrutinised the accounts which



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