Mumbai: The restrictions imposed by the RBI on the Punjab and Maharashtra Bank have brought bad news for a BJP leader who, a week ago, parked a huge amount in this bank. This has put in jeopardy his fixed deposits which he cannot encash. These FDs were reserved for Diwali Bonus.
Ramesh Shendge, a former MLA and now a BJP leader, recently parked crores of rupees in fixed deposits in the PMC Bank. "This money was to help me garner funds to give Diwali bonus to the 400 employees of my company.
I am now stranded as I am unable to give them the assured bonus. This will be a black Diwali," Shendge told FPJ. Sadly, the employees also have their salary accounts in this bank. Also frozen are Shendge’s current accounts of his two companies -- MR Maritime and Ajay international.
"We deposit the salaries of our employees in this bank every month. Moreover, a week ago I parked one crore rupees in fixed deposits to give Diwali bonus to our employees.
Earlier I had this money in another account of a nationalised bank. But the PMC bank officials persuaded me to close my old bank account and open a new FD in the PMC banks, offering me one per cent interest rate more than that in a nationalised bank," said a shell-shocked Shendge.
He added, "Since we had transactions with this bank for a long time, I believed them. But I am in a shock since I learnt of the RBI restrictions on our bank," he said.
When asked whether he ever got any alert about Bank's financial condition, he negated. "Usually, businessmen check the NPAs of a bank, but it was not more than 2 per cent, which is normal for any co-operative bank.
The bank had good amount of deposits. In fact, banks with 25 per cent NPAs are doing good. We were not even aware that this bank had loaned Rs 2,500 crore to HDIL.
Even I expressed my anguish to the bank officers after we learnt of it recently, who said even they were not aware of this issue. Moreover, many of the bank staff opened FDs in this bank," Shenge said.
By Pramod Chunchuwar
