Punjab National Bank lost 28 billion rupees ($431 million) to various frauds last fiscal year, the government said on Friday, making it the biggest such loser among all state-owned banks even before it uncovered an alleged $2 billion fraud this year. This has been dubbed as the biggest bank fraud in India's history, but the finance ministry told parliament that even before the fraud came to light, state banks lost a total of 195.33 billion rupees to 2,718 cases of fraud in the year that ended on March 31, 2017. Also read PNB scam: Bank requests provisioning relief from RBI over multicrore fraudPunjab National, better known as PNB, alone reported 158 cases of fraud in 2016/17, the ministry said. Reuters reported last month that India's state-run banks reported 8,670 "loan fraud" cases totalling 612.6 billion rupees over the last five financial years up to March 31, 2017. In India, loan fraud typically refers to cases where the borrower intentionally tries to deceive the lending bank and does not repay the loan.

Source: dna March 09, 2018 10:54 UTC