BoM chief, ED’s powers restored

Satyanarayan Iyer

Pune: A day ahead of the court hearing on the closure report filed by the Pune police in the case of discharge of two top executives and one former official at

Bank of Maharashtra

(

BoM

), the lender’s board has restored the functional powers that were taken away from the serving executives.

“The board of directors of the bank in its meeting held on November 2, 2018 decided to restore/reinstate the functional responsibilities of

R P Marathe

, managing director and CEO, and

R K Gupta

, executive director, with immediate effect,” the bank said in a statement on Friday evening.

On June 29 this year, in a hurriedly called board meeting, Marathe and Gupta were divested of all their functional powers after the government nominee on the bank’s board, Vandita Kaul, flew in from the capital. The decision was taken after the Economic Offences Wing arrested the two executives for over five days and also the former CMD of the bank

Sushil Munhot

for what they believed was out-of-the-book lending to the now defunct, Pune-based realtor DS Kulkarni Developers.

Last month, the Pune Police decided to withdraw their case against Marathe, Gupta and Munhot after it ruled out criminal intent in extending the loans to the developer. It, however, did not withdraw its case against the bank’s zonal manager Nityanand Deshpande and said that the investigation against him continues.

Soon after the arrest, the entire banking ecosystem including the RBI rallied in support of Marathe and Gupta, and took up the matter with the finance ministry and the chief minister’s office over the ham-handed approach of the police towards the investigation. “There was no need of any arrest. It was not as if they were running away. Whatever questions needed to be asked could have been asked of them in the bank,” Indian Banks’ Association CEO V G Kannan told TOI last week.

The three bankers maintained that they did no wrong and only complied with RBI guidelines in lending to Kulkarni, secured adequate collaterals in each case and followed what other consortium partners did while lending to the realtor.

One of the three arrested told TOI on the condition of anonymity that, “The arrest casts doom over years of reputation that we had built. We and our families have been through immense pain over the past few months. We just want our standing to be restored in society.” While Marathe and Gupta continued to attend office, they stayed away from all functional responsibilities. Marathe superannuates in November end, while Gupta’s term at the bank ends in December.