Female Auditor Anita Kirdat Arrested By Mumbai Police EOW In The PMC Bank Fraud And Remanded To Custody

Anita Kirdat, a female auditor has been arrested by the Mumbai police Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police has arrested a woman auditor (CA) in connection with the Rs 4355- crore scam in the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank.

She was arrested from her residence in Bhandup, Mumbai, after which a local court remanded her to EOW custody until November 18, bringing the total number of accused arrested so far in the case to eight.

Earlier, the EOW had arrested two statutory auditors, namely Jayesh Sanghani and Dhirajlal Sanghani in connection with the scam. Others arrested in the scam include, former managing director of the bank, Joy Thomas; former chairman Waryam Singh, Rakesh Wadhwan and Sarang Wadhwan, besides three other directors.

Initially, the EOW began probing into the massive fraud in the multi-state co-operative bank by registering an FIR under Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to cheating, fraud, and falsification of documents as well as criminal conspiracy, among others.

Anita’s firm, Anita Kirdat & Company, had conducted the concurrent audit into the book of accounts of the PMC Bank for seven consecutive years, between 2005 and2019. Unlike statutory auditors who conduct the annual scrutiny of the bank’s book of accounts, concurrent auditors perform the task on a day-to-day basis.

According to the EOW’s findings, amounts more than Rs 4355 crore were made to 44 loan accounts belonging to the Rakesh Wadhwan and Sarang Wadhwan promoted HDIL group of companies were masked through over 21,000 ghost accounts. Due to this, these ghost accounts never showed up in the core banking solution or the bank’s non-performing assets (NPA) even after successive audits.