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The Yogi government in UP has suspended two senior bank officials from the District Cooperative Bank in connection with the case of illegal interest payment to a trust linked to senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan.
According to media reports, the two bank officials suspended on Saturday (September 16, 2023) include Deputy General Manager Shakeel Ahmed and Secretary Upendra Kumar Saraswat. Both are senior officials of District Cooperative Bank Rampur. This action has been taken against both officers following investigation of financial irregularities.
what is the whole thing
According to the report, both of them are accused of illegally paying interest to Azam Khan’s Jauhar University, Jauhar Trust and Rampur Public School. After suspension, both the officers have been attached to the Lucknow headquarters.
Investigations revealed that Jauhar University branch of District Co-operative Bank was treating bank accounts operated in the name of Jauhar University and Jauhar Trust as savings accounts. Subsequently, the branch paid interest of Rs 17.58 lakh to Jauhar University and Rs 2.18 lakh to Jauhar Trust in July 2022.
Apart from this, the Degree College Department of the District Cooperative Bank also accepted the account operated in the name of Rampur Public School as a savings account. After this interest of 3.67 lakh was also paid to the public school. Interestingly, these three accounts are run by Samajwadi Party leader Mohammad Azam Khan.
According to the rules, the District Cooperative Bank can neither consider these accounts operated by the three institutions as savings accounts nor give interest on them. Surprisingly, many other institutions including Saraswati Shishu Mandir, Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Arya Samaj and District Panchayat also have accounts in District Cooperative Bank, but so far they have not received any interest payment from the bank. This is where the error is detected.
How did the revelations come about?
Let us tell you that when this matter came to the notice of local MLA Akash Saxena, he sent a complaint to the Additional Chief Secretary and demanded an inquiry into the matter. After receiving the information, MLA Saxena sent a complaint to the state’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, following which an inquiry committee was formed.
The board found in its investigation that the payment of interest was against the rules. Following this, the UP government led by CM Yogi Adityanath took action and suspended both the guilty bank officials and attached them to the headquarters.
It is noteworthy that even before this, the Income Tax (IT) department had raided SP leader Azam Khan’s premises in Rampur in connection with the tax evasion probe against the former minister. The agency’s raid, which lasted three days, was allegedly linked to the Johar Trust. In this case too, tax evasion of Rs 800 million has been estimated.
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