Indian PSU banks report fraud of $13bn in 6 months |
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday told the parliament that the country`s state-run banks have reported frauds worth 13.34 billion dollars in the first six months of Financial Year 2020. Between April and September this year, as many as 5,743 cases of fraud were reported. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the parliament, Sitharaman said "Government has taken comprehensive measures to curb the incidence of fraud in banks." The measures included the freezing of 3,38,000 bank accounts of inoperative companies in the last two financial years in addition to the enactment of a law with a provision to confiscate the property of economic offenders. State Bank of India reported fraud of 3.5 billion dollars followed by Punjab National Bank of 1.5 billion dollars and Bank of Baroda of 1.2 billion dollars. Going by the Reserve Bank of India`s (RBI) annual report for Financial Year 2019 released earlier this year, cases of frauds reported by banks went up by 15 percent on a year-on-year basis from 2018-19. As per the report, the sector reported 6,801 frauds cases which amounted to a loss of Rs 71,542.93 crore in FY19. This was higher than the 5,916 cases reported in FY18, which caused a loss of Rs 41,167.04 crore in FY18.
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