The Parliament was informed on Tuesday that the top 50 wilful defaulters collectively owed about Rs 92,570 crore to Indian banks as of March 31, 2022. Fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi, who defaulted on loans worth Rs 7,848 crore, tops this ignoble list.
Mehul Choksi, who is originally from Gujarat, is infamous for the Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam in which the public sector bank was defrauded of close to Rs 13,500 crore. He allegedly masterminded the scam in which his nephew Nirav Modi is also an accused.
The siphoning of funds only came to light in 2018, about 8 years after the Choksi-led Gitanjali Gems started defrauding PNB. Choksi has fled the country since then and is currently a ‘wilful defaulter’ who is wanted by Indian authorities such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
A wilful defaulter is a borrower who has the ability to make the necessary repayments to the lender but refuses to do that. So, how exactly did Choksi defraud PNB, India’s second largest government-owned bank, and many other financial institutions?
Choksi’s Cheat Codes
Gitanjali Group, a retail jewellery firm with around 4,000 stores in India, is at the centre of the PNB scam. With the complicity of some staff members at the public sector bank, Choksi’s Gitanjali Gems initiated a series of transactions at PNB from 2011 onwards that were not recorded in the bank’s Core Banking Software (CBS)….
