The Mumbai Police has sought to close the case.
Mumbai:
In a development concerning the alleged Rs 25,000-crore Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) scam, the Mumbai police and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are at loggerheads over the closure report filed before a court here.
The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the city police on Thursday opposed the central agency’s plea against closing the case, citing that the apex cooperative bank did not suffer any unfair loss due to the purported fraud.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar was named as an accused in the original case registered by the EOW.
While the police sought to close the case as they found no significant loss to the bank, the ED intervened, expressing concerns that accepting the closure report would impact their ongoing money laundering investigation linked to the scam.
The ED has already filed prosecution complaints and supplementary chargesheets in the case, emphasising the interconnected nature of the investigations.
The EOW filed a written submission in the court in which they rebuffed the ED’s intervention, noting that a similar plea had been rejected previously by a special court for cases involving MPs and MLAs.
The timeline of events includes the police filing a closure report in September 2020, which was initially accepted by the court.
However, further investigation was initiated in October 2022 based on protest petitions and the ED’s involvement.
The EOW moved to close the case again in March this year, asserting that no unfair losses were incurred by the bank due to the alleged fraud.
The FIR, which followed a High Court order in August 2019, alleged that loans of several thousand crore rupees obtained by sugar cooperatives, spinning mills and other entities from district and cooperative banks were diverted and not repaid.
Lodged under various sections including criminal breach of trust and cheating, the FIR named NCP leader Ajit Pawar as an accused with over 70 others, who served as directors of the bank during the relevant period.
The allegations outlined a loss of Rs 25,000 crore to the Maharashtra government between 2007 and 2017, pointing to violations of banking regulations and RBI guidelines in loan disbursements to sugar mills and the undervalued sale of defaulting businesses’ assets.
A former judge, appointed as an authorised officer by the cooperative commissioner, concluded “there was no unfair loss to the bank due to the loans given to the factories (sugar mills),” and “the bank was recovering the amount from the factories by legal means”, the closure report said.
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