Mumbai: Pvt Firm, Director Booked by CBI in ₹80 Cr Bank Fraud Case

Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a criminal offence against a Mumbai-based company engaged into manufacturing of plain, laminated aluminium foils and other related material used for packaging of medicine, eatables, etc for allegedly having caused a wrongful loss to the consortium banks led by State Bank of India (SBI) to the tune of Rs 80.73 crore.

Searches were conducted at several places including at Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Solan (Himachal Pradesh) which led to recovery of incriminating documents, hard Disc, electronic gadget etc, agency officials said on Monday.

SBI Mumbai lodges written complaint against firm

According to the CBI, a written complaint dated June 6, 2023, was received from Prakash Bharti, DGM, SBI Mumbai against PB Dutta and his company M/s. Parth Foils Pvt. Ltd. (PFPL) located in Dahisar. "The complainant bank sanctioned a term loan of Rs 22 crore to PFPL for setting up its manufacturing plant at Silvassa. Subsequently on May 26, 2005, the bank had sanctioned another term loan of Rs 4 crore to the company for setting up a manufacturing unit at Baddi. Due to a stretched working capital cycle, the company started to face the liquidity issue and since July 2010, the account was under continuous stress. In September 2011, a major fire incident was reported at Silvassa plant (contributes 90% of the operations) of the company and the plant was shut down for three months. The total loss was estimated at approx Rs 22 crore against which SBI General Insurance paid a claim of Rs 14.97 crore, leaving a shortfall of approximately Rs 7 crore," the CBI stated in its FIR.

"The account of the borrower company was restructured in 2013 by carving out a Working Capital Term Loan and Funded Interest Term Loan. The company resorted to ad-hoc drawings from the consortium lenders. However, it was treated as a failed restructuring in October 2014 and the account of the company was classified as NPA on March 25, 2013, retrospectively. Subsequently, the bank conducted a fraud angle examination in respect to the account of the company, on the basis of which the SBI declared the account of the company as fraud on September 27, 2019. The fraud angle examination report disclosed that the company and its promoters availed the credit facility on the basis of manipulated stocks book debts statements, financial statements with inflated figures/over stating sales, income and profit in order to able to draw higher volume of amounts from the consortium banks and thereby diverted the entire loan amount without it's end utilisation and caused wrongful loss by the company and its promoters/guarantors," claimed an agency official.