Jaitley questions PNB auditors’ role
Centre will chase fraudster till end: FM
Breaking his silence over the `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 Development Financial Institutions 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.
New Delhi, Feb. 20: The Income Tax Department on Tuesday issued a notice to Anita Singhvi, the wife of senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, asking her to explain about certain jewellery purchases, amounting to `6 crore, allegedly from a showroom owned by beleaguered diamantaire Nirav Modi, sources said.
Singhvi, meanwhile, refuted the allegations made against his family and described the action as “harassment” being meted out to him as he belonged to an opposition political party.
The notice, the sources said, was issued on Tuesday to Anita Singhvi and that she was asked to explain how much she had paid in cash and through cheque to purchase the valuables and jewellery a few years back.
It is understood that the I-T feels that about `1.5 crore was paid by cheque for the purchase of the jewellery, while about `4.8 crore was paid in cash by Anita Singhvi.
The tax department wants to know the details of the transaction and the source of these funds as part of its tax evasion probe against Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, the promoter of the Gitanjali Gems group.