Shal­iza?Has­sanali

The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) Sheivan Ram­nath has called for an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the find­ings of the 2012 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­port which re­vealed that loans to­talling $9 mil­lion ap­proved by the bank were used for the con­struc­tion of a bar, lounge, hard­ware and two-storey build­ing.

Ram­nath's call for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was trig­gered by Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Clarence Ramb­harat, who spoke about the con­struc­tion of the two-storey build­ing, which con­tained a mas­ter bed­room, jacuzzi, walk-in clos­et, wrap­around pa­tio, recre­ation room, loft, study, liv­ing-room and din­ing-room when he de­liv­ered his bud­get con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate on Oc­to­ber 20.

Ramb­harat al­so queried a sports bar in Ch­agua­nas and hard­ware.The build­ings were con­struct­ed af­ter the bank had ap­proved loans in ex­cess of $9 mil­lion to ap­pli­cants. The ADB of­fers loans to farm­ers for start up busi­ness­es, agri­cul­tur­al equip­ment, ve­hi­cles, busi­ness ex­pan­sion, con­struc­tion of farm build­ings and in­fra­struc­ture.

On Fri­day, Ramb­harat in re­sponse to an e-mail said the find­ings of the re­port "will be sub­ject to in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I have not re­ceived a re­sponse from the ADB to the mat­ters raised in the Au­dit Gen­er­al's re­port."In light of the rev­e­la­tions, Ram­nath said the bank's in­ten­tion was to "in­ves­ti­gate in­ter­nal­ly" the con­tents of the re­port. Ram­nath said the probe had be­gun and a de­tailed re­port would be on his desk next month.

"If any­thing is found out of the or­di­nary it would be re­port­ed to the high­er au­thor­i­ties," Ram­nath gave his as­sur­ance.

For­mer food pro­duc­tion min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said he was tak­en by sur­prise when he heard about the re­port. In 2012, Bharath, who was re­as­signed to the Min­istry of Trade, said the mat­ter was not brought to his at­ten­tion, nor was he made aware of it.

"I don't know when it ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened. It could have hap­pened in Sep­tem­ber af­ter I left of­fice, I don't know. It could have hap­pened while I was there as min­is­ter."Bharath said it was not his job as min­is­ter to mi­cro man­age.

"It is im­pos­si­ble for a min­is­ter to know every sin­gle thing in a min­istry."Bharath said for a farmer to qual­i­fy for a loan, a pro­pos­al has to be sub­mit­ted by the ap­pli­cant, which would be re­viewed by man­age­ment and a rec­om­men­da­tion made.

"Then the board ap­proves once the ap­pli­cant meets all the re­quire­ments and checks and bal­ances are done."Bharath said once the ap­pli­cant re­ceived the mon­ey, the bank should en­sure the mon­ey was spent for the pur­pose in­tend­ed.

"The on­ly way the per­son could have built a sports bar, lounge and jacuzzi is if the ADB did not do fol­low-up checks.

"Some­body has fall­en down on the job. At the end of the day, what­ev­er it was, the fact is, that some­body should have paid the price...some ac­tion should have been tak­en, re­gard­less of what it was."