Top 50 defaulters have frauded ₹92,000 crore from banking system, information provided by Finance Ministry in Lok Sabha revealed. This list is led by Gitanjali Gems with over ₹7,800 crore of fraud. Meanwhile, the Ministry also said that public sector banks have recovered over ₹1-lakh crore from the written-off amount.

In response to a question, Minister of State in Finance Ministry, Bhagwat Karad furnished the list, as a part of written reply, which has fugitive economic offender Mehul Choksi’s firm Gitanjali Gems on top while his relative and another economic offender, Nirav Modi’s firm Firestar is at the 49th place with ₹803 crore of amount owned to banks. Both are accused in PNB scam related with fraudulent letter of undertaking worth ₹10,000 crore issued by the bank. 

Among top ten defaulters, other prominent names include Era Infra (₹5,879 crore), Rei Agro (₹4,803 crore), ABG Shipyard (₹3,708 crore), Winsome Diamonds (₹2,931 crore) and Rotomac Global (₹2,893 crore).

“Comprehensive steps have been taken by the Government to deter defaulters, to take effective action against them and to recover the default amount from them, including recovery from written off loans. It has enabled PSBs to recover an aggregate amount of ₹4,80,111 crore during the last five financial years, of which ₹1-lakh crore is from written-off accounts,” Karad said.

He also informed the House that as per RBI instructions, wilful defaulters are not sanctioned any additional facilities by banks or financial institutions, and their unit is debarred from floating new ventures for five years. Such people and companies with wilful defaulters as promoters/directors have been debarred from accessing capital markets to raise funds.

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