Urban co-operative banks in the country have raised Rs. 220 crores lost

(PTI) New Delhi, Ta. January 27, 2020, Monday

Urban Co-operative banks have lost Rs 220 crore in nearly one thousand cases in the last five financial years, the Reserve Bank said. General Chat Chat Lounge

There were 99 and 27 cases of fraud cases registered in 2017-18 and 2016-17 respectively, losing Rs 46.9 and 9.3 crore respectively. In 2015-16, Rs 17.3 crore was lost in 187 cases and Rs 19.8 crore in 478 cases in 2014-15.

A total of 972 fraud cases were registered with the bank during 2014-15 and 2018-19 in which the banks lost Rs 221 crore, the Reserve Bank said. 'The fraud complaint has to be reported to the police while it has to be reported to the Reserve Bank.

Banks have to check the extent of staff responsibility and appropriate punishment after internal process, "the Reserve Bank said. The bank declined to give details of who was punished by saying 'we do not have it'.

"We have no details on what steps were taken or whether the measures were taken," the central bank said. The significance of the fraud cases is because recently the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank went into liquidation of a real estate company called HDIL, giving it a loan of Rs 6500 crore against its total assets of Rs 8880 crore.

A total of 1544 Urban Co-operative Banks in the country had deposits worth Rs 4.84 lakh crore as of March 31, 2019. Of them, 496 banks in Maharashtra alone had deposits of Rs 3 lakh crore. The second was Karnataka's Urban Co-operative Banks, which has Rs 55102 crore in 219 banks and third-ranked Urban Co-operative Banks of Gujarat with Rs 41096 lakh crore in 263 banks.