The suspended managing director of Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank, Joy Thomas, has blamed the auditors for the mess at the bank.
In a five-page letter to the Reserve Bank of India dated September 21 after a board member blew the lid on the fraud at PMC, Thomas has confessed to the role of the top management, including a few board members, in hiding the actual NPA numbers and also the actual exposure to the bankrupt HDIL.
NPA is stated to be around Rs 6,500 crore or over 73 per cent of its total loan book of Rs 8,880 crore.
The letter of Thomas is part of the first information report filed by the Economic Offence Wing of the Mumbai Police on Monday.
Thomas claimed in the letter that The shallow auditing of the books of PMC by its statutory auditors was done as the ‘bank was growing’.
Thomas claimed in the letter “The statutory auditors validated the incremental loans and advances and scrutinised the accounts which were shown to them by the bank.”
In the past eight years, PMC had three statutory auditors — Lakdawal & Co (FY19 and FY18); Ashok Jayesh & Associates (FY17, FY15, and FY11) and DB Ketkar & Co (FY14 and FY12).
Thomas confirmed that the exposure to the bankrupt HDIL Group continued to remain standard despite there was delay in repayments for over three years.
