Maharashtra based Scheduled Bank Bombay Mercantile Cooperative Bank MD Shah Alam Khan has strongly denied his involvement in the Rs 2.67 crore scam saying “we have already cleared the dues of UP Minorities Finance and Development Corporation Limited and therefore they are making baseless allegations”.
Earlier, the media reports said an FIR of fraud and financial bungling of Rs 2.67 crore was registered against five officials of Bombay Mercantile Cooperative Bank Limited. The complainant was UP Minorities finance and Development Corporation Limited and those who were accused in the FIR included the chairman and managing director of the UCB.
“The case is related to 2003 when I was not the Managing Director of the Bank and I joined as the MD in 2014. In fact, I was never posted to Kaiserbagh, the Lucknow branch of the bank. How could they say I indulged in the fraud? The UP Minorities finance and Development Corporation Limited was tarnishing the image of the bank”, Khan said while rubbishing the charges.
”We too have lodged a counter FIR against the corporation claiming we have cleared all their dues. Presently, the investigation is underway and if we are found guilty, we are ready to face the consequences, he asserted.
The corporation in the complaint said , “they had started a fixed deposit account of Rs 15 lakh on July 10, 1997 but the bank did not refund the amount when its term ended in 2003”. Even Alam conceded that the Corporation had written letter asking us to return the money or they would lodge an FIR against the bank.
The FIR lists four names besides the MD and Chairman. They are UCB’s chairman Syed Zeeshan Mehdi, MD M Shah Alam Khan, AGM Badre Alam Khan, officer in-charge of fixed deposits section Tariq Saeed and manager in- charge of the bank’s Kaiserbagh branch Noor Alam.
It bears recall that earlier Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had imposed a Rs 75 lakh penalty on Bombay Mercantile Co-operative Bank Ltd., Mumbai for violations of Know Your Customer/Anti-Money Laundering (KYC/AML) directives.
It also deserves repetition that Bombay mercantile bank had been beset by enormous non-performing assets and therefore had earlier been superseded by the RBI.
Bombay Mercantile Cooperative has 4 branches in Uttar Pradesh and a total network of 52 branches in different states. The bank’s total business mix is Rs 5,000 crore.
Whatever Alam may say but it is not for the first time that the bank has been charged with misappropriation of funds, such charges have been leveled against the bank on several occasions in the past, say several UCB experts.