Mumbai: A day after Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman declared that ABG Shipyard Ltd’s Rs 22,842-crore scam was detected “faster than normal average”, the Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday pushed back the fraud date by 8 years.
Spelling embarrassment for the Centre, the CBI declared that a perusal of the records and the initial investigations show that the scam’s “critical period was 2005-2012” – making it nearly 18 years old now.
The CBI said the ABGSL was conducting business with the SBI since 2001 and the bank declared it as a Non Performing Asset on November 30, 2013.
Referring to the SBI complaint, the CBI said the fraud was to the tune of Rs 22,842-crore and “the majority of disbursements took place between 2005-2012” by the consortium of 28 banks, led by the ICICI Bank, including the SBI.
On accusations of delays in lodging the complaint only last week, the CBI tried to shift the blame by saying: “Withdrawal of general consent to the CBI investigation by certain states has made the registration of bank fraud cases more challenging.”
The agency said how it could not lodge around 100 high value bank fraud cases due to “non-accordance of specific consent u/s 6 of DSPE Act by state governments where the general consent has been withdrawn” – but did not name the states.
“After analysis of basic facts of the case, scrutiny, discreet verification, and the issues mentioned in the complaint and verification of the…
