The PMC Bank scam was more audacious than any Bonnie and Clyde heist. A high-living father-son duo, Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan, had 44 bank accounts in a loosely regulated outfit in Mumbai called Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank.

They used these accounts to suck out nearly Rs 6500 crore, a mind-boggling 73% of the total loan book of the ill-fated bank.

This robbery took place right under the noses of RBI and the auditors. How?

The 44 Wadhawan accounts were “masked” by 21,000 – yes, get this, twenty-one thousand – fictitious accounts, many in the names of dead depositors. Allegedly, the bank allowed overdraft draw downs, with the cash travelling via hawala (laundering) channels to Dubai.

The tainted money was “washed back” clean into PMC accounts as deposits.

While loans were given to the Wadhawans in the hidden-but-real ledgers, the fake loan accounts of 21,000 depositors were sent in the Advanced Master Indent to RBI. That’s “masking”, got it?

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