The case emerged in July and the bank completed its first investigation by August 15. Yet it has not filed a criminal complaint against the accused. PHOTO: REUTERS
“No fraud has been committed in PMYBL scheme, rather it was a case of unauthorised operational entries and most entries have been reversed,” stated a hand-out issued by the NBP in response to a story published in The Express Tribune.
However, the bank’s public stance on the issue is contrary to its internal correspondences. An analytical report of the NBP Mardan region has dubbed the case as fraud. Out of the Rs77.87 million in question, the bank in its internal report declared Rs8.2 million as “misutilisation/parallel banking”.
Moreover, this week the top management of the NBP informed the Senate Standing Committee that Shah Nawaz Khan, manager credit, was “criminally involved” and the case will be sent to the National Accountability Bureau for further investigation.
The Express Tribune reported last month that millions of rupees have been embezzled in the PM’s business loan scheme by its staff in the main branch of Mardan region.
The case surfaced in July this year and so far the NBP management has recovered Rs53.54 million out of Rs77.87 million, according to the information provided by the management to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance this week.
The bank has so far failed to recover the remaining amount of Rs24.33 million, which is over 31% of the embezzled amount.
An NBP hand-out stated that there were total 161 loan accounts and as an abundant caution, balance confirmation to all 161 PMYBL loanees was sent. So far, 147 customers out of the total loan accounts have confirmed the correctness of their balances, it added.
The accused person illegally withdrew money from as many as 126 accounts, according to the NBP brief on the case.
The bank insisted that it was not dilly-dallying in registering the criminal case against the accused persons. Being a corporate body, the bank has to follow specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure non-partisan investigations and to collect all possible reliable evidences against the accused officials before registering any FIR/Criminal Complaint, it added.
The case emerged in July and the bank completed its first investigation by August 15. Yet it has not filed a criminal complaint against the accused. However, it has suspended 11 people involved in the case including the prime accused. The bank’s stance on the case is also contrary to its own instructions, issued to deal with cases of fraud and forgery. A 1982 circular of the NBP states, “The matter of (fraud and forgery) should be reported to the police, if no recovery of the embezzled amount is possible within period of ten days”.
The bank has yet to recover Rs24.33 million.
The NBP said that as per SOPs, such accused officials are immediately suspended and transferred to Regional Offices to ensure transparency in the investigations. After conducting the investigations, as per the rules, criminally involved officials are nominated in the FIRs and cases are registered with the appropriate “Agency” for prosecution purposes.
“The NBP is a responsible institution and follows all rules, regulations and laws of land in discharge of banking business and nobody at any level of managerial hierarchy has escape to these rules,” it vowed.
NBP said that after detection of these unauthorised entries, the bank suspended the delinquent staff members and initiated disciplinary proceedings against them as per the Staff Services Rules. There is no denying of the fact that the bank shall refer the case to criminal agencies against criminally involved officials as the bank has zero tolerance policy against such offenders, it added.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 23rd, 2016.
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