New Delhi: Breaking his silence over the Rs 11,400 crore fraud at India's second-biggest bank, PNB, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the state will chase down cheaters to the end even as he took the management of the lender to task for its failure to check the delinquents.
Without naming either the alleged kingpin of the fraud, billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi, or Punjab National Bank, Mr Jaitley questioned the ethics of some businesses in the country and asked as to why the bank’s internal and external auditors could not detect the fraud which had been going on for seven long years.
“It is incumbent on us as a state, till the last legitimate capacity of the state, to chase these people (fraudsters) to the last possible conclusion to make sure the country is not cheated,” he said addressing the annual meeting of Association of Develo-pment Financial Instit-utions in Asia & Pacific.
Mr Modi, whose diamond creations have draped Hollywood stars such as Kate Winslet and Dakota Johnson, and firms linked to him are alleged to have acquired fraudulent LoUs from one PNB branch in Mumbai between 2011 and 2017 to obtain loans from Indian banks overseas.
Investigative agencies have raided Mr Modi’s properties and arrested bank employees. Mr Jaitley said the government had been step by step addressing issues like high-level of bad debts and need for more capital, but the effort has been put to challenge with the unravelling of the fraud.
He reminded the public sector banks that Prime Minister gave managements the autonomy they needed with none from the government calling.
“When authority is given to the managements you are expected to utilise that authority effectively. Therefore the question for the management itself is were they found lacking? And on the face of it the answer seems yes they were,” he said.
