Mumbai: Usha Ananthasubramanian, former managing director and CEO of Allahabad bank and one of the accused in the Rs.14,000 crore fraud case at the Punjab National Bank (PNB), was granted bail by a special CBI court in Mumbai.
The court had earlier this month, taken cognizance of the sanction granted by the President ordering prosecution of Ananthasubramanian in the case.
As per the procedure that needs to be followed, whenever any court takes cognizance of the granted sanction, a summon is issued ordering the accused to appear before the court. Only after that, the accused will have the capacity to move a bail application.
In the same way, Ananthasubramanian made his appearance in front of the special judge J C Jagdale and moved his application for bail which was thereby granted by the court. Ananthasubramanian was dismissed by the government on August 14.
Following the biggest bank fraud in the country ever, Ananthasubramanian was divested of all of her powers as MD and CEO of the Allahabad Bank three months ago. The fraud was carried out by the famous diamond jeweler Nirav Modi and his associates at the Punjab National Bank.
At that time, Ananthasubramanian was the MD and CEO of the bank before she moved to the Allahabad Bank and after the fraud unveiled, she was named in the CBI charge sheet with regard to the Rs. 14,000 crore fraud by using fake LoUs in connivance with some of those PNB employees.
As per the allegation levelled against her, she did not exercise proper control over the PNB functioning while she was serving in the bank as managing director.
Thus, her ill-approach enabled the fraud in the bank by the way of misuse of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), which is an international payment gateway, at PNB’s Brady House branch.
Ananthasubramanian had held two different roles in the leadership capacity in the PNB. During August 2015 and May 2017, she was the head of the bank before she moved to the Allahabad Bank. At previous to that, she held the post of executive director at the bank during July 2011 and November 2013.
At that time when she was in PNB, Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi allegedly cheated PNB of amount up to Rs. 14,000 crore by getting certain bank officials to issue fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoUs) in connivance with them.
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