Alleging harassment and seeking protection from RBI for whistle blowers, the officers from Dhanlaxmi Bank, supported by AIBOC decided to again resort to agitations against the unjustified termination of PV Mohanan, the general secretary of DBOO
After observing a strike for almost 33 days, the officers in Dhanlaxmi Bank Ltd said they will again resort to agitations against the unjustifiable termination of PV Mohanan, the General Secretary of Dhanlaxmi Bank Officers' Organisation (DBOO).
Service of Mohanan, who was working as Senior Manager in the Bank's Recovery Department at Thrissur, was terminated on 11 June 2015 citing 'loss of confidence'.
The National Executive Committee of All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC), after taking a stock of the situation in a recent meeting, has decided to again commence agitation to reinstate Mohanan and restore trade union's rights in Dhanlaxmi Bank. The meeting was attended by DT Franco Rajendra Dev, senior vice president of AIBOC, V Chidambarakumar, president of All India Private Sector Officers Federation, Paul Mundadan, secretary of All India Private Sector Officers Federation and Abraham Shaji John, Secretary for Kerala of AIBOC.
"By dismissing the General Secretary, the Management wants to silence the whistle blowers in the Bank and also find an alibi for their mismanagement, as the DBOO is on an indefinite strike," the DBOO had said in a statement.
Our emails sent to the top management of Dhanlaxmi Bank remained unanswered till writing this article. We will incorporate their answers as and when we receive it.
According to the Officers' Organisation, it is on the path of agitation for the last 10 months as the Bank Management had chosen a victimization route against the association, for pursuing genuine trade union activities. "The difference of opinion started in early 2014 when DBOO alerted the Bank's management on a major fraud (through the Bank's whistle blower policy) that was being perpetrated through one of the Bank's Mumbai Branches," the Organisation said.
The scam, worth about Rs1,500 crore, involving several other banks is now being probed by the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police. "There are indications about the involvement of higher level executives of Dhanlaxmi Bank also in the fraud, but as of now one of our junior level officer, a member of DBOO, who just obeyed the instructions from the top management, has been arrested and is in jail for the last two months. One Director of the Bank tendered his resignation in view of the involvement in the fraud," DBOO had said.
In two letters sent to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the union had alleged that despite having clear evidence of the active involvement of top officials of the Bank in the high value fraud in Mumbai, perpetrated by Showman group, no action has been initiated against either the Managing Director or the Chief General Manager of the Bank. It said, "This is a mystery to all. Only one Director Sreekanth Reddy resigned. A Scale I officer, who passed the entry in the computer system has been booked and is in jail since past two months. We fear that with the passage of time, evidenced will be destroyed and facts will be distorted. This is our worry and the real culprits will go scot-free."
Moneylife was the first one to report the AIBOC allegations that the bank has manipulated accounts and provisioning, has a mismatch in asset-liability resources, maintains poor capital adequacy ratio and has huge dependence on call money borrowing. It has also accused the bank for ignoring social banking and financial inclusion. (Read:
The stink coming from Dhanlaxmi Bank: AIBOC raises serious allegations)
According to DBOO the trend continues. For FY2014-15, Dhanlaxmi Bank reported a net loss of Rs241 crore compared with Rs251.9 crore same period a year ago. "This is in contrast to the first three quarters of profit that the Bank has been showing since 1 April 2014. The sudden plunging into a heavy loss itself is an indication of the accounting adjustments that the Bank has been practicing for long. The very purpose of publishing quarterly results is to ensure transparency of the Bank's working to the public at large. But by projecting a rosy picture for three quarters and then showing negative results only at the end of the year, the Bank is once again proving the accounting adjustments it has been doing to cheat depositors, employees and other stake holders," the Organisation said in its letter to the RBI.
Requesting intervention by the central bank, the DBOO said, "As the scheme of protected disclosure or whistle blowers scheme has the sanctity of Regulator's directive, we strongly feel that it is also the duty of the RBI to give protection to the whistle blowers. This, however, is not happening in Dhanlaxmi Bank. The officers are always at the receiving end whenever a whistle blowing is done. So we appeal to the RBI to kindly intervene and advise the management suitably".
Last year in August,
the EOW unearthed a largescale banking fraud worth about Rs1,000 crore related with fixed deposits (FDs) in several banks. According to reports, banks involved in this large scale FD fraud include, Dena Bank, UCO Bank, Syndicate Bank, Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank, Dhanlaxmi Bank, Bank of India and Indian Overseas Bank among others. Among the institutions who were victims of the fraud are the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) and South Indian Education Society (SIES) Trust.
