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The All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) has named 5,610 wilful defaulters, who collectively defrauded public sector and private sector banks in India of a staggering amount of Rs 58,792 crore as on March 2016.
As per the list released by the apex bank employees' association late on Tuesday, the nationalised banks had the most 3,192 accounts as wilful defaulters with amount running up to Rs 28,775 crore.
Top defaulters of PSU banks and financial institutions included Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery Ltd with a default amount of over Rs 2,266 crore, Forever Precious jewellery & Diamonds (Rs 1,001 crore), Kingfisher Airlines Ltd (Rs 1,201 crore), Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd (Rs 884 crore), Indian Technomac Co Ltd (Rs 625 crore), Rank Industries (Rs 566 crore), Raza Textiles (Rs 694.59 crore), Rei Agro Ltd (Rs 580 crore), S Kumars Nationwide Ltd (Rs 598 crore), Zenith Birla (India) Ltd (Rs 139 crore), Zoom Developers (Rs 1,710 crore), and Electrotherm India (Rs 385 crore).
For State Bank of India and its five associate banks, the number of wilful defaulters was 1,546 with a total defaulted amount at Rs 18,576 crore. Private sector banks, financial institutions and foreign banks were not spared either by the wilful defaulters, who defrauded these institutions of Rs 10,250 crore, Rs 728 crore and Rs 463 crore, respectively.
Among the top three nationalised banks having the highest amount of defaulted loan amount are Punjab National Bank with 698 accounts (Rs 9,445 crore) followed by Central Bank of India and Oriental Bank of Commerce with 639 and 339 accounts, respectively with a default amount of Rs 3,574 crore and Rs 3,545 crore, respectively.
In private sector, Beta Naphthol promoted by Deepak Baweja and others defaulted a loan amount of Rs 951.97 crore from Kotak Mahindra Bank, among the highest for the lender.
Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank and Indusind Bank were among the top private sector banks with highest default amount at Rs 5,442 crore, Rs 993 crore and Rs 899 crore, respectively.
The AIBEA list included foreign banks, Standard Chartered Bank, Doha Bank and Deutsche Bank in top slot with default loan amount at Rs 301 crore, Rs 72 crore and Rs 31 crore, respectively.
Commenting on the increasing loan defaults by wilful defaulters, AIBEA General Secretary C H Venkatachalam, said, "The government and the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) are not taking tough measures to recover the bad loans. Even their (defaulters') names are not being published."
"Loans are given from public money. Hence, people should know who the loan defaulters are. When poor borrowers are harassed, corporate defaulters are given all concessions. The number of willful defaulters is also on the increase," AIBEA said.
According to AIBEA, the bad loans of public sector banks have jumped by almost 10 times since 2002 from Rs 54,673 crore to Rs 5,39,995 crore for 2016.
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