PSU bank fraud: Which banks tops with most employees caught in the act

India’s largest bank State Bank of India has topped the list of PSU banks with maximum number of actions taken against officials involved in fraud in the last three years. All these actions pertain to frauds involving a sum of one lakh rupees or more.

In last three years (2015-2017), action has been initiated against 1,287 officials of State Bank of India for their involvement in fraud. This is over 9% of the total cases involving bank staff in public and private sector banks, Shiv Pratap Shukla, minister of state in the ministry of finance, informed the Rajya Sabha in his written reply.

Punjab National Bank figures at the second position in the list with 1,127 officials or 8% of the total 13,949 officials allegedly involved in fraud. Manipal based Syndicate Bank figures at the third position in the list with action taken against 894 officials of the bank.

While SBI has been fighting court cases against high profile accused and liquor baron Vijay Mallya to recover the loans given to Mallay’s now-defunct airlines Kingfisher, several top officials of Punjab National Bank have been accused of helping diamond baron Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi in securing loans through fraudulent means.

Sudhir Kumar Jain, the then chairman and managing director of Syndicate Bank was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in August 2014, for his involvement in ‘bribe-for-loan scam’, involving Prakash Industries and Bhushan Steel which were probed by the anti-corruption agency in the coal block allocation scam.

Central Bank of India figures at the fourth position in the list with action taken against 728 of its officials followed by the Bank of Baroda with action taken against 674 of its officials.

During this period, action has also been initiated against 618 officials of Canara Bank, 555 officials of UCO Bank and 515 officials of Corporation Bank.

While the action was initiated against 5,785 officials in 2015 for their involvement in fraud, the figure for 2016 and 2017 was 4,360 and 3,804 officials.