One bank official is held for fraud every four hours in a public sector bank (PSB), an analysis of data compiled by The Times of India, based on a Reserver Bank of India (RBI) report, revealed.
According to the report, over 5,200 officials were held for fraud in PSBs between 1 January 2015 to 31 March 2017.
Of the total number of frauds, 2,084 cases saw the involvement of insiders, accounting to 12 percent of the cases. But the data does not say how much money was involved in the frauds committed by the employees.
The data revealed that State Bank of India (SBI) topped the list in the number of frauds by officials with 1,538 cases followed by Indian Overseas Bank (449 cases) and Central Bank (406 cases).
The Punjab National bank (PNB), that is currently facing the heat of the Rs 11,400 crore fraud by billionaire jeweler Nirav Modi, has reportedly had 184 cases of frauds by its employees in this time period.
In 2016-17, 3,870 cases of bank fraud were reported amounting to Rs 17, 750 crore was reported across banks including commercial and private banks. Out of these, 450 cases had insider involvement.
Between 2013-2017, 17,504 total cases of bank frauds were reported in public and private sector banks. Out of these, 2,084 had insider involvement.
"These employees have been convicted, awarded penalties, including dismissal from service," the RBI document states.
The data does not reveal the financial loss banks suffered due to employees committing fraud, separate data accessed from RBI by The Times of India for the period between 1 April 2013 and 31 December 2016 shows that all commercial banks, including private ones, lost Rs 66,066 crore to 17,504 frauds.
According to The Times of India, the RBI has been issuing circulars to banks about how to effectively report cases and also put in place mechanisms to prevent them.
(With inputs from The Times of India)
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