Thousands of citizens along with employees of Pen Urban Cooperative Bank from Maharashtra’s Raigad district Sunday started a march to chief minister’s bungalow in Mumbai to press for their demands.
As a part of the ‘Save Pen’s Bank’ movement, depositors, employees and account holders of the bank from Pen town of the district started the 72-hour march to Mumbai. The movement was supported by the All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and the Maharashtra State Bank Employees Federation.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in September last year imposed stringent restrictions and passed an order for the closure of 18 branches of the Pen Bank. Despite this the bank was said to have released loans for over Rs.500 crore to non-existing account holders without verification of documents.
The RBI, in October last year, imposed a penalty of Rs.1 lakh as the bank failed to satisfactorily respond to a show cause notice.
“The 72-hour march will culminate at Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan’s residence where a delegation of bank representatives will meet and apprise him of the situation,” said Vishwas Utagi, general secretary of AIBEA.
“Several employees have lost their jobs and thousands of depositors and account holders have lost their money due to many scams by the bank’s chairman and directors,” he added.
In November last year, bank chairman Shishir Dharkar, his wife and six others were arrested in connection with another scam related to gold export worth Rs.480 crore.
High-priced hooker’s mum dismayed over ex-NY Guv Spitzer’s comeback moves
New York, Sep.2 (ANI): The mother of the high-priced hooker who famously serviced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has expressed dismay over reports that he may consider running for office again less than two years after the sordid sex scandal.
“Only in America,” Ashley Dupre’s mom, Carolyn Capalbo, told The New York Post.
While Spitzer is discussing the possibility of a run next year, Dupre-who was 22 when the self-described “steamroller” of Albany paid to play with her-is struggling to get back on her feet, said Capalbo.
“I really can’t blame him, but at the same time, my daughter’s having a rough go,” she said at the beach, near her home in Wall. “I can imagine she’s not happy about it.”
“He has more credibility than a 22-year-old,” Ashley’s mom said in disbelief.
Capalbo said her daughter had turned down lucrative offers to make a buck off of the scandal, including posing for nude magazines.
Less than 18 months after he left Albany in a prostitution scandal, Spitzer has held informal discussions in recent weeks about the possibility of making a bid for state comptroller or the US Senate seat currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand, sources said.
The hooker-happy Democrat has also discussed his own halfway-decent poll numbers in recent surveys, which have shown him more popular than Gov. Paterson, whose own numbers have tanked.
“He”s weighing it,” said one source.
But Spitzer hasn”t shown any interest in campaigning for the office he briefly held, sources said.
The sources stressed that Spitzer, who also served two terms as state attorney general before his landslide election as governor in 2006, has not engaged in any active discussions with political consultants.
Reached at his father”s real-estate firm, where he has been working since he resigned as governor last spring, Spitzer declined comment.
But a source close to him insisted, “It”s not true,” and two other close associates also insisted he was not interested in running for office again and was looking at a range of other options.
Spitzer quit in disgrace in March 2008 after he was unmasked in Manhattan federal court as “Client 9″ in a prostitution bust involving a major call-girl ring. He was revealed to have paid 4,300 dollars for a romp with escort Ashley Dupre, then 22. (ANI)