Team Herald
MARGAO: Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco on Saturday demanded that a special audit be conducted of Goa State Co-operative Bank Ltd either by NABARD or Reserve Bank of India and urged that First Information Reports (FIRs) should be lodged against those responsible for manipulating the figures of the bank over the years.
Briefing media persons, Aleixo said, “Many Goans have their hard earned money deposited in the bank and today fear that their investment will be lost as the bank is facing crisis which are manmade and largely due to the failure on the part of government to take decisive steps when required.”
He pointed out that RBI is closely monitoring the functioning of the bank and there are fears that restrictions on financial transactions are likely to be imposed on the bank and hence people have started withdrawing their deposits on large scale which will further affect the functioning of the bank.
Aleixo held the government responsible for the present mess as it failed to take required action despite the fact that the matter has been raised in the Assembly various times since 2012 besides writing several letters to the ministers including former chief minister late Manohar Parrikar.
He said out that the Registrar of Co-operative Societies has no control over the bank and has not even conducted an audit of the bank for the last many years.
He further alleged that the Registrar was hand in glove with the management of the bank in multi-crore auction scam.
Aleixo pointed out that the statutory auditors keep changing and alleged that the auditors are changed whenever they make adverse observations on the functioning of the bank.
“M/s Bhandari and Associates were changed as auditors after they pointed out in the year 2012-13 the profit of the bank was overstated by Rs 33.70 crore when in reality the profit was only Rs 8.73 crore and they were replaced by R K Pikale & Co,” he added.
“R K Pikale was replaced when he gave adverse remarks for the year 2013-14 on the big loans sanctioned by the Board of Directors and Venkatesh Shenai was appointed as the new auditor. However, when Venkatesh in the audit report of 2017-18 pointed out that the bank was not following the proper accounting procedures he too was removed as auditor and now a choice of the management is given charge,” said Aleixo.
