From Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Gems to ABG Shipyard, top-50 defaulters owe over ₹87,000 crore to lenders

India's top-50 loan defaulters owe ₹87,295 crore to banks and financial institutions, according to the Union Finance Ministry. Fugitive Mehul Choksi's Gitanjali Gems is the biggest wilful defaulter owing ₹8,738 crore to banks, followed by Era Infra Engineering Limited owing ₹5,750 crore, REI Agro Limited ₹5,148 crore, ABG Shipyard Limited ₹4,774 crore, and Concast Steel and Power Limited ₹3,911 crore.

Other wilful defaults are Rotomac Global Private Limited ₹2,894 crore, Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery Limited ₹2,846 crore, Frost International Limited ₹2,518 crore, Shri Lakshmi Cotsyn Limited ₹2,180 crore, and Zoom Developers Private Limited ₹2,066 crore.

In a written reply to Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said the top 10 wilful defaulters owe ₹40,825 crore to schedule commercial banks (SCBs).

Karad added that SCBs have written off an aggregate amount of ₹10,57,326 crore during the last five financial years (RBI provisional data for FY 2022-23).

Karad said the provision enabling banks to enter into compromise settlement in respect of borrowers categorised as fraud or wilful defaulter is not a new regulatory instruction and has been the settled regulatory stance for more than fifteen years.

In a separate reply, Karad said 66,069 frauds were reported in 2022-23 causing a loss of ₹85.25 crore. In the previous year, 65,893 frauds were reported with financial implications of ₹115.36 crore.

In order to prevent fraudulent online transactions, he said, RBI has been issuing various instructions to the regulated entities from time to time.

"RBI issued a comprehensive circular on Cyber Security Framework for Banks in June 2016 and for Urban Cooperative Banks in October 2018 respectively. As per these circulars, banks were advised to put in place a board-approved cyber security policy elucidating the strategy containing an appropriate approach to combat cyber threats given the level of complexity of business and acceptable levels of risk," he said.

Further, he said, to enhance the cyber security posture of online transaction and prevent cyber frauds, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issues alerts and advisories regarding the latest cyber threats/vulnerabilities and countermeasures to protect computers and networks on an ongoing basis, tracking and disabling phishing websites and facilitating the investigation of fraudulent activities in coordination with service providers, regulators, and law enforcement agencies.

With regard to complaints received by the JanSamarth Portal, he said, a total of 23,276 grievances have been received since its launch, out of which 21,250 complaints have been closed in a time-bound manner.

JanSamarth Portal was launched to provide a common platform for availing loans under a few credit-linked government schemes to start with.