Bank frauds over the previous five years have plunged immensely by Rs 648 crore in the first nine months of 2021-22, on the back of organisational and procedural modifications to examine such events, Parliament was notified on Monday.
In 2016-17, bank frauds reached Rs 61,229 crore, which plunged to Rs 11,583 crore in 2020-21 and again to Rs 648 crore during April-December 2021-22, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad declared in a written response to the Lok Sabha. Boosted detection and reporting along with detailed phases resulted in a sharp decline of such frauds, he announced.
The Reserve Bank of India had granted master directions on frauds in 2016, he announced, further saying the government has started wide-ranging structural and procedural changes to check frauds in banks.
“Such logical and comprehensive checking of frauds, comprising of the legacy stock of non-performing assets (NPAs), led to the unearthing of frauds occurred over the years,” Karad announced.
Even as the systematic and comprehensive checking has enhanced the annually noted amount comprised in frauds, it has also concluded in sharp plunge in the occurrence of such frauds, he told. The minister announced that inclusive steps have been taken to put a check on frauds in banks, involving addressing security flaws and assuring investigation of such events.
He announced that RBI had granted circular to all banks in 2018 to execute security and operational controls, such as straight-through strategy between the bank’s core banking solution or analysis system and the SWIFT messaging system, stimulating time-based restrictions in SWIFT, review logs at every interval, among others.
