ABG Shipyard Scams Indian Banks Of Over Rs. 22,000 Crore
Former chairman of ABG Shipyard Rishi Agarwal has been questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with the ? 22,842 crore bank scam, said to the country's biggest.
ABG Shipyard has done India's biggest bank fraud. Their fraud is even more than that of Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya. It has cheated a total of 28 banks of ?22,842 crores between 2012 and 2017. The case has come to light only now. The banks include State Bank of India (SBI), IDBI and ICICI, etc. FIRs were filed. and there were audit reports that showed that loans were not being repaid for long periods still the banks did nothing about it. In 1985 ABG Group started ABG Shipyard Ltd. It is their main company. Rishi Kamlesh Agarwal is the Chairman of the company. This company does the business of shipbuilding and repair. They had shipyards in Dahej and Surat in Gujarat. Business booms and ABG Shipyard builds 165 ships in 16 years.
Then between 2005-2010 Banks continued to lend generously to ABG Shipyards. In 2008 there was an economic crisis all over the world, still the banks kept on giving loans. In March 2014 SBI realized that ABG is not able to return the loan. So SBI starts negotiating with ABG to see how the money can be returned. Despite everything ABG is still not able to return the money. ABG is not able to return SBI’s money as well as loans taken from other banks. SBI identifies a fraud in January 2019. Ernst and Young LLP conducts forensic audit on ABG Shipyard. It finds evidence of fraud between April 2012 and July 2017. The audit shows that fraud was conducted through using the loans for buying personal assets & the money was diverted to 98 sister companies of ABG. SBI files a complaint in November 2019. SBI files a more detail complaint in AUgust 2020. Finally on 7 February 2022 CBI registered a case against ABG Shipyard and ABG International Private Ltd.
Here are the amounts of loans taken from various banks.
ICICI ?7,089 crore
SBI ?2,925 crore
IDBI Bank ?3,639 crore
Bank of Baroda?1,614 crore
Punjab National Bank ?1,244 crore
Exim Bank ?1,327
Indian Overseas Bank ?1,244 crore
Bank of India ?719 crore
Plus loans were taken from many other companies. The total was Rs 22,842 crore. This week the CBI questioned Rishi Agarwal, and ABG executives Santhanam Muthuswamy and Ashwini Kumar. The CBI has also told airport immigration authorities to not allow them to leave the country. Even the Enforcement Department is investigating the case. This seems to be the biggest financial scam of India.
