Kolkata: CBI sleuths on Thursday arrested two Kolkata-based businessmen in connection with a bank fraud to the tune of Rs 515 crore. One of the two arrested men are supposedly close to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Businessmen Shibaji Panja and Kaustav Ray were booked by the CBI along with their computer manufacturing firm RP Info Systems, for allegedly cheating a consortium of banks led by Canara Bank.
The CBI had earlier carried out searches at the residences of all the accused and their corporate office in Kolkata.
It has been alleged that the directors of the company, Shibaji Panja, Kaustuv Ray and Vinay Bafna, and its vice president defrauded Canara Bank and nine other consortium member banks to the tune of Rs 515.15 crore.
The other members of the bank were State Bank of India, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur and State Bank of Patiala (both now part of the CBI), Union Bank of India, Allahabad Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Central Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of Patiala and Federal Bank.
It is alleged that loans were taken on the basis of false and fabricated documents.
The bank in its complaint on February 26, now part of the FIR, has alleged that the company which manufactured computers with brand name Chirag had taken funds from the consortium from time to time from 2012 onwards. These loans have become NPA, it said.
Panja has been earlier arrested by the Delhi Police over other cases of bank frauds.
RP Infosystems, too, has had a brush with law earlier as the CBI had booked it in 2015 for cheating IDBI bank, once a leader of the consortium before relinquishing the position in 2013, to the tune of Rs 180 crore.
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