Cheating and forgery causes huge losses to public sector banks
31 Jan, 2014The reply to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that a huge cumulative sum to the tune of Rs. 23,000 crores has been lost by the public sector banks in past three years due to cheating and forgery.
The data provided in the reply to the application suggests that the number of cases of bank frauds has decreased over past three years. However, the data also reveals that despite this decrease in the number of frauds, the amount lost by the banks has increased by thousands of crores. For example, the total number of fraud cases between April, 2010 and March, 2011 was 3,748 and the amount lost by the banks due to these frauds was Rs. 3275 crore. The number of fraud cases came down to 2,996 in the period from April, 2012 to March, 2013 but at the same time the lost amount increased to around Rs. 10180 crore. Among different banks, Indian Overseas Bank lost the maximum amount of money i.e. Rs. 3,200 crores in last three years, which was interestingly more than its profit for the same period. The second highest loss of Rs. 2,722 crore was suffered by the State Bank of India followed by Canara Bank with a loss of Rs. 2,394 crore.
The reply also shows that over 6,000 employees, including many top-brass posts of different public sector banks are under scanner for their alleged involvement in the fraud cases.