Top PMC officials hid HDIL accounts from system

Senior officials of scam-hit PMC Bank used special codes to hide hundreds of dummy loan accounts of HDIL, to which the bank had over 73 per cent of its loan exposure, the Reserve Bank informed the Bombay high court on Tuesday. In an affidavit, the RBI also said of the 1,800 employees of Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank, only about 25 of them could access the loans accounts of the now bankrupt real estate developer HDIL and its group entities. The regulator said these few employees used an access code to hide and restrict the visibility of these dummy accounts of the realty developer. The Reserve Bank is closely monitoring the situation at the bank and a forensic audit is underway, governor Shaktikanta Das had said earlier amid persisting uncertainty over depositors' funds. The arrested promoters of HDIL allegedly siphoned funds from PMC Bank by using overdraft facilities and the money was "disguised" as loan accounts by bank officials, the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police had said earlier.