Mumbai. The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police on Saturday arrested Abdul Zameer Khan, a 36-year-old man from Wadala, in connection with the siphoning off of ₹21.32 crore from the fixed deposits (FDs) of the Railway Goods Clearing and Forwarding Establishments Labour Board (RGCFLB). The main accused Rajan Sakhare was arrested in the same case three years ago.
Sakhare, who was the acting manager of the State Bank of India’s Four Bungalows, Andheri West, branch at the time, had helped several accused fraudulently avail of an overdraft facility on the account in order to siphon off money from the RGCFLB’s fixed deposits worth ₹24 crore.
Khan, who is alleged to be close to Sakhare, was arrested on the complaint of Vijay Chaudhary, assistant labour commissioner and president of RGCFLB. The EOW probe revealed that ₹1 crore of the siphoned-off amount was diverted to the bank account of his company, National Industries, while ₹4 lakh was diverted to his personal account. Khan also diverted ₹15.50 crore more later to his company’s bank account and to the account of an ‘entry operator’ (slang for someone who illegally rotates cash and converts black money into white) and later withdrew cash and gave it to another accused called Amit Dave.
The RGCFLB, in 2016, had invested in FDs worth ₹24 crore in the Four Bungalows branch of the State Bank of India. Sakhare, who was the deputy manager then, was in charge of the branch, since the then branch manager was on leave. Taking advantage of the situation, he and his group of other accused availed of the overdraft facility on RGCFLB’s FD by forging documents, including a forged consent letter of the company.
At the time of making the investment, the RGCFLB had laid down certain terms and conditions—among them the condition that no person, organisation or bank could take an overdraft facility or loan on the FD. Sakhare violated all these terms and with the help of the other accused, allegedly created trails of forged and bogus documents, including the consent letter from the bank and clearance letters from other departments of the bank to avail of the overdraft facility worth ₹21.60 crore on the RGCFLB’s funds.
“As per the rules, Sakhare was allowed to sanction an overdraft facility of ₹40 lakh at the most. But despite that, he sanctioned one worth ₹21.6 crore,” said an EOW officer.
The scam surfaced during the bank’s internal probe, which found that Sakhare had violated rules pertaining to the procedure of deposit and advances with malafide intention. He was arrested in 2019.