Punjab National Bank on Thursday, July 9, reported a loan fraud of a whopping Rs 3,688.58 crore in the account of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFL).

‘A fraud of Rs 3,688.58 crore is being reported by the bank to the RBI in the accounts of the company (DHFL). The bank has already made provisions amounting to Rs 1,246.58 crore, as per prescribed prudential norms,’ PNB said in a stock exchange filing.

The country’s third largest public sector bank said the fraud in the non-performing asset account of DHFL ‘at Large Corporate Branch’ in Mumbai was reported to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

This is the fourth scam that PNB has reported in three years.

Non-banking financial company DHFL is in bankruptcy proceedings.

PNB has said it had already made provisions of Rs 1,246.58 crore to the fraud. The bank was hit by a Rs 11,300-crore fraud involving billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi in 2018.

Authorities are probing DHFL’s promoters and its loan book to analyse the extent of any scam.

Other banks including State Bank of India and Union Bank have also reported Dewan Housing Finance’s accounts as fraudulent.

PNB in June reported about Rs 73,500 crore of bad loans for the fourth quarter of financial year 2019-20. As a percentage of total loans, bad loans were 14.21 per cent, as against 15.5 per cent in the last quarter.

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