Wilful defaulters’ dues at PNB rose 23 per cent in 8 months

New Delhi: Punjab National Bank has seen nearly 23 per cent jump in the amount which wilful defaulters owe it, with loan outstanding of Rs 25 lakh and above, in preceding eight months from January.

The wilful defaulters, who have taken loans over Rs 25 lakh from the bank, had a gross outstanding against them of Rs 14,593.16 crore as on January 31, 2018, as per PNB data. When the bank first started giving out such data in June 2017, the gross loan outstanding against them was at Rs 11,879.74 crore.

The amount has grown over 22.8 per cent in these eight months. The rise in such outstanding is startling, especially when the bank has been aggressive for over a year now in recovering bad loans.

The 123-year old bank has unearthed Rs 11,400 crore fraud allegedly involving billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and associate companies. The fraud pertains to issua-nce of fake Letters of Understanding (LoUs) to companies associated with Modi by errant PNB employees that ena-bled these companies to raise buyers credit from international branches of other Indian lenders.

PNB has been putting out the list of wilful defa-ulters since June 2013 which it continued till May 31, 2017. Since then it is only listing out those wilful defaulters with outstanding of Rs 25 lakh and above with their names from June 2017.

Bank’s net NPAs or bad loans fell to Rs 34,076 crore at the end of Q3 of the current fiscal, from Rs 34,994 crore at end-December, 2016.