Mumbai: Three vehicle loan officials take firm for a ride, booked

05 October,2017 09:43 AM IST |  Mumbai  |  Vijay Kumar Yadav

The accused fraudulently sanctioned loans for 287 ghost vehicles; the police have also booked the agent from Hyderabad the errant employees were hand in glove with


The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police has booked three loan officials who took their own company for a ride by fraudulently sanctioning loans for as many as 287 commercial vehicles, including trucks and cars, This caused the company a loss of Rs 7 crore. The company, Fortune Integrated Assets Finance Limited, is based out of Elphinstone Road and finances commercial vehicles.


Representation pic

Complaint lodged
According to sources, a few days ago, company supervisor Vinod Solkar lodged a complaint against a resident of Hyderabad, identified as Tirumali Shamir, as well as company employees P Shiv Nagaraju, M D Shakir and others. As per the complaint, the company only sanctions to applicants through a Revenue Sharing Partner (RSP) or agent. "An RSP's role is very important as s/he, or the agency, has to check the antecedents of the loan seekers, his/her KYC details and financial potential for repayment of the amount," said a source.

Missing EMIs
In 2016, the complainant company appointed Andhra Pradesh-based A-Star Auto Finance as an RSP and signed a one-year agreement with the agency, whose proprietor is Hyderabad resident Shamir. After completing all the procedures as per rules, the complainant company sanctioned loans for 457 applications, but 287 recipients defaulted in repaying the loan. After this development emerged in the audit, the company commissioned a private investigator. The probe report stated that there had been gross misappropriation and illegalities, and many rules and laws had been violated in the loan sanctioning system.

The private probe also found that the people on whose names the loans were sanctioned were themselves missing from the given address.

Also, the co-recipients and the guarantors of the loan had no idea that their documents had been misused by the RSP agency for multiple loans. Many said that they had not signed any loan documents.

The inquiry further revealed that in many cases, physical verification of the vehicle was not done. Later, it was revealed that the vehicles never existed. Most importantly, forged and bogus documents were used to fraudulently procure the loan, said another source.

Stole from clients too
The RSP, which also had the responsibility of collecting EMIs from the loan recipients and sending it to the financing company, siphoned off payments worth Rs 77.46 lakh.

The company soon discovered that RSP proprietor was, in fact, a salaried employee in a Hyderabad-based firm as an animator, after which it intensified the internal probe and found suspected involvement of the three employees.

The accused have been booked under various Indian Penal Code sections for cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery, criminal breach of trust.

457
Total number of applications for which the company sanctioned loan

287
Number of ghost vehicles for which loans were sanctioned

Rs 7 crore
Total loss to the company, Fortune Integrated Assets Finance Limited

Rs 77.46 lakh
Worth of payments the company's Revenue Sharing Partner siphoned off

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