Bar owner, bank manager held for ₹7.5 crore loan fraud

The Delhi Police on Friday said they had arrested one of the owners of F Bar & Lounge located in Delhi’s Connaught Place, an assistant general manager (AGM) of Punjab National Bank (PNB), and two others for allegedly cheating the bank of around ₹7.5 crore that they had obtained as loans using forged documents.

Police said that out of the ₹7.5 crore, ₹7 crore was disbursed in two instalments between 2012 and 2014 by the PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai—the same branch that had allegedly issued fraudulent letters of undertaking in the ₹14,000-crore scam involving diamond jeweller Nirav Modi.

The arrested bank official, PK Varun (currently under suspension), was the assistant general manager of the Mumbai branch when the loans were sanctioned and disbursed.

The remaining ₹49 lakh was a home loan the accused had obtained from PNB’s Mayur Vihar Phase 3 branch.

The then manager of this branch, Sheetal Gang, has been absconding after a case was registered in connection with the fraud, Delhi Police said in a statement issued on Friday.

Additional commissioner of police (economic offences wing) Suvashish Choudhary said the ₹7 crore obtained as loan was used to open the F Bar & Lounge. Choudhary identified the other arrested men as Ajay Kumar Sharma, one of the owners of F Bar and Lounge, and his two associates, Amarjeet Singh, and Suresh Kumar.

A team of the economic offences wing (EOW) made the arrests between September 11 and September 20 from different areas in Delhi following a cheating and fraud case filed by the PNB in 2017.

The fraud was detected when the bank launched an internal probe related to the Nirav Modi scam.

The public relations company handling the PNB account said the bank would release its statement on Saturday. The F Bar & Lounge could not be contacted for comments.

The additional CP said the loan was illegitimate since the collateral offered by the accused never existed.

“Our probe revealed that the account holder never visited the bank’s Mumbai branch and all formalities of opening of account as well as equitable mortgage of property were facilitated in Delhi by the AGM in violation of the existing norms and the bank’s SOP (standard operating procedure). The bank officials prepared false site visit reports regarding the property that never existed,” Choudhary said.

Police said false documents and reports regarding site inspection and revenue records were prepared to facilitate the loan. “The son of the AGM was involved in the operation of F Bar and Lounge and owned 20% of share in the company running it,” the additional CP said.

Choudhary said Singh had opened an account in PNB’s Mayur Vihar Phase-3 branch using forged documents in the name of his sister, Sarita, with the bank manager’s help.

“Singh and his sister allegedly obtained a home loan of ₹49.90 lakh against a bogus property in Delhi’s Sita Ram Bazaar. The money was used to set up of a temporary factory at Surajpur Noida, so that further l

oans can be obtained by showing the factory in working condition,” he said.

Investigators said Sharma and Singh then opened a “shell” company in Mumbai and declared Kumar as one of the directors in order to avail a ₹5 crore cash credit facility from the bank.

The bank disbursed the ₹5 crore loan into the company’s account.

“The money was transferred into other accounts and was finally siphoned off. The fraudsters also obtained ₹2 crore under over draft (OD) facility of the bank and the money was again misappropriated,” said an investigator, who asked not be named.

Choudhary said these amounts were sanctioned against the collateral security of the properties in Delhi, which were all bogus and never existed.