Recently, the Enforcement Directorate arrested KK Abraham, former Kerala Pradesh Congress General Secretary and President of the Pulpally Service Cooperative Bank, in connection with the case concerning the fraud and money laundering reported from the bank. ED officials interrogated Abraham after taking him into custody. Apparently, he was admitted to the hospital after he reported feeling uneasy.
Later on, he was brought back to the ED office. Earlier, local Congress leader and the main accused, Sajeevan Kollapally was also arrested. During the interrogation, Sajeevan had reportedly given statements regarding Abraham hence, he was taken into custody. ED officers carried out a raid at KK Abraham’s residence in Chundakolly.
ED is understood to have found that Abraham had a key role in sanctioning loans by overvaluing properties before granting the loans.
According to reports, the state has been witnessing cooperative bank scams one after another and cases of deceiving investors for the last few years. All are multi-crore scams. The Karuvannur fraud of more than Rs 100 cr is the ‘mother’ of cooperative bank scams. If CPM men have been manning such banks, now here is a scam manned by Congress men. In Pulpalli, due to the fraud of the bank-engineered scam, Rajendran Nair (60), a poor farmer, committed suicide. KK Abraham was arrested on May 3 for loan fraud and in connection with the suicide of Rajendran Nair. He was arrested from home. At the same time, Remadevi, a former bank secretary and the second accused, was arrested too. It is in light of the complaint raised by P Daniel, another fraud victim.
The local people protested as soon as Nair’s body was seen in a field. They declared that the body would not be allowed to move to the hospital until the District Collector, or RDO, reached the spot. At last, the Tehsildar and police discussed the issue with the protesting mob, and the body was taken for a post-mortem.
Nair was a poor man. The bank record says he was given a loan of Rs 25 lakhs against the pledge of his land. But, Nair had made it clear that he took only Rs 73,000 from the bank as the loan. Obviously, it was a fraud Rs 25 lakhs loan was taken by allegedly forging Nair’s signature. Now, loan interest has been calculated as Rs 40 lakhs.
A former office bearer has reportedly stated that K.K. Abraham and his aide had managed this; the accused might have bagged crores of rupees in this method. Local people say, Rejendran Nair was only entitled to have a loan of Rs 80,000, given the collateral he possessed. Now, according to records, bank has to get Rs 50 crore back as the monies loaned. Forged loan applicants, exaggerated property value, etc. were the methodologies the fraudsters had applied. Loans were organised in the name 38 people. Thirty of them are cheated. The rest are either relatives or close associates of the frauds. Kollappilli Sajeevan, said to be the kingpin of the team, is reported to have collected the title deeds from the loan applicants. He got their signature; the box for the loan amount were filled up by conspirators. An elderly couple was cheated in this style. They had collected Rs 2 lakhs as a loan and now they have to pay back Rs 1 crore. Numerous incidents like this are reported from there.
Abraham had reportedly collected Rs 6 lakhs from several people for inspecting the land and sanctioning the loans. And the land value was exaggerated to Rs 65 lakhs, while the actual value was something like Rs 6 lakhs. All the tricks in the book were used like this for the fraud. This journal listed them in June 2023.
Now, Congress establishes that cooperative bank fraud is not the monopoly of CPM.
