Bank frauds rise to a whopping Rs71,500 cr in 2018-19: report
04 Jun 2019
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Banks in India, already sitting on a pile of non-performing loans, have reported over 6,800 cases of loan frauds involving Rs71,500 crore in 2018-19, a PTI report cited Reserve Bank of India as saying.
This represents a nearly 15 per cent increase from total of 5,916 such cases reported by banks in 2017-18 and a 74 per cent increase from the Rs41,167.03 crore amount defrauded during the fiscal, it said.
As many as 6,801 cases of fraud were reported by scheduled commercial banks and select financial institutions involving Rs71,542.93 crore in the last fiscal, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in reply to an RTI query filed by a PTI reporter.
With this banks have reported a total of 53,334 fraud cases involving Rs2,05,000 crore in the last 11 fiscal years, the report quoted RBI data as showing. During 2008-09, a total of 4,372 cases were reported involving an amount of Rs1,860.09 crore while in 2009-10, 4,669 cases involving Rs1,998.94 crore were reported.
A total of 4,534 and 4,093 such cases were reported in 2010-11 and 2011-12 involving Rs3,815.76 crore and Rs4,501.15 crore, respectively. In the 2012-13 fiscal, 4,235 fraud cases involving Rs8,590.86 crore were reported by banks as against 4,306 cases (involving Rs10,170.81 crore) in 2013-14 and 4,639 cases (involving Rs19,455.07 crore) in 2014-15, the RBI said.
As many as 4,693 and 5,076 cases of fraud were reported in 2015-16 and 2016-17 involving Rs18,698.82 crore and Rs23,933.85 crore, respectively, it said. “Cases of fraud reported to RBI are required to be filed by banks as criminal complaints with law enforcement agencies. The information in respect of action being taken or already taken is not available readily,” the central bank said.
The data reveals that besides the high-profile cases on absconding billionaires Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya among others, the number and size of the fraud list could be more than banks admit.
RBI bars EY group's Batliboi from auditing bank books for one year
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has banned audit firm SR Batliboi & Co LLP, a member of global auditing firm EY, from auditing bank books for a year, after the central bank found lapses in the books certified by the firm.
The RBI said in a brief statement that it won’t “approve the said firm from carrying out statutory audit assignments in commercial banks for one year starting from April 1, 2019”.
RBI found huge divergence in bad debt reported by banks for 2015-16, particularly in the case of Axis Bank and YES Bank. The divergences, to the tune of more than Rs13,500 crore between the banks, were reported by the banks in their annual reports in 2017.
Both books were audited by Viren Mehta, partner, Batliboi. “We have learnt of this development from the press release issued by the RBI and are not aware of further details. Accordingly, we will be unable to comment further at this stage,” read a statement from SR Batliboi.
