Rs 7,951.29 Cr Fraud Found By SBI In 1,885 Cases During April To December: RTI Reply

During the first nine months of the current fiscal year, the State Bank India (SBI) claimed that a fraud had unfolded in which Rs 7,951.29 crore involving 1,885 cases of fraudulent activities have come to the fore.

A sum of Rs 37,326.66 crore has been parked by the Mumbai-headquartered PSU banking giant in contingencies and provisions (other than tax) between April 2018 to December 2018, down 20.49% lower than Rs 46,943.12 crore, which was assigned by the bank a year earlier in the same period.

SBI claimed while reporting the Q3 results 2019, that at the end of December 31 last year, its gross non-performing assets (NPAs) has moderated to 8.71%. Compared to this, at the end of September 30 last year, it was 9.95% and 10.35% on December 31, 2017.

Fraudulent activities

In its reply to RTI, sought by an activist Chandrashekhar Gaud, SBI said that out of the 1,885 fraudulent cases, about 669 cases have been registered in the April-June quarter amounting to Rs 723.06 crore. On the other hand, 660 cheating cases were registered in the July-September quarter amounting to Rs 4,832.42 crore, and in the October-December quarter, 556 cases involving Rs 2,395.81 crore were witnessed by the bank, reported Times Now.

However, SBI did not want to share any information related to what financial losses its customers had to suffer because of the fraudulent cases. Under Section 7 (9) of the RTI Act of 2005, for such revelations, the bank is exempted. The reason why SBI refused to share the details is because of phishing of credit, debit cards and online fraudulent transactions.

According to Card Statistics December 2018 and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), SBI has about 75.25 lakh credit cards, about 3,110.47 crore active debit cards, which is the largest with any bank in India, and 58,350 ATMs. The ATMs include 25,625 on-site and 32,725 off-sites, and in the month of December 2018, transaction of Rs 1.22 lakh crore with the debit cards via ATM and PoS was carried out.

Also Read: 21 Public Sector Banks Lost Rs 25,775 Crores to Bank Frauds in FY 2017-18, Says RBI