EOW writes to auditors’ body about role of 3 accused in PMC Bank fraud

The Mumbai Police’s economic offences wing (EOW) has written to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) about the role of the three auditors arrested in the ₹4,355-crore Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank fraud case.

Two private auditors, Jayesh Sanghani and Ketan Lakdawala, were arrested on November 11, while the third auditor, Anita Kirdat, a chartered accountant (CA) from Bhandup, who runs a firm called Anita Kirdat & Company, was arrested on November 12. “We have sent a report [to the ICAI] in this regard,” said a senior EOW officer.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) inspection of PMC records had pointed to serious discrepancies in the facility accounts of Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL), but Sanghani and Lakdawala had overlooked it. EOW stated that the forensic audit report revealed that Sanghani and Lakdawala did not give “adverse opinion” for five financial years (from 2014 to 2019), which clearly indicates “wilful omission” on their part.

According to EOW, Kidat, who served as the concurrent auditor of PMC Bank from 2005 to 2019, allegedly did not observe any discrepancies in the financial affairs of the bank and shielded HDIL’s non-performing asset accounts from the RBI scanner for a long time.