Analyzing Punjab National Bank Scam Ashutosh Kolte* Assistant Professor, Department of Management Sciences, (PUMBA), Savitribai Phule Pune University

Home , Allahabad Bank, Punjab National Bank

© 2019 JETIR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 6 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) Analyzing Punjab National Bank Scam Ashutosh Kolte* Assistant Professor, Department of Management Sciences, (PUMBA), Savitribai Phule Pune University

Paresh Wagh Tata AIG General insurance Company, Pune.

Abstract:

The Punjab National Bank (PNB) lost $1.77 billion in Nirav Modi case. The magnitude of the scam is very huge. This puts serious questions regarding how the scam took place either due to combination of external &internal processes or some other reasons, the technicalities behind the scam related to SWIFT, CBS, auditing etc. and the extent of scam impact as whole have been found out in this paper. The RBI is facing questions from the public regarding why it did not able to detect the banking scam during the auditing. The causes of this big scam with technical base and the scam impact have been found out. Now, this is the time where all Public Sector Banks (PSBs) should learn from such types of happenings. In this paper, the identification of the scam & its analysis is carried out. This paper also focuses on the failure of the audit and internal processes and practices that caused the scam.

Keywords: PNB Scam; Nirav Modi; Banking Scam; India; Nationalized Banks; RBI Regulations.

1. Introduction

World credit market had adverse impact due to financial crisis which caused Lehman brothers and other financial institutions go bankrupt with huge credit crunch. (Mathiason, 2008) (Sanches, 2014). The recession was huge and was the one, which created history. Right after this recession only, the credit system got hampered. It had harsh impact on global economy where Indian Banking sector was also included.

On Feb 14th2018, the Punjab National Bank which was the second largest Public sector banks reportedto stock exchanges, Central Bureau of Investigation and Reserve Bank of India regarding exceptional transactions of approximate value$1.77 billion tending to be fraudulent (Bandopadhyay, 2018). The other PSBs were also in bad condition during that period. This bank fraud added in the anxiety level. 11 banks out of 21 listed banks came under RBI’s eagle eye view due to their condition of severe condition of capital, assets return and loans. During the government planning of bank capital infusion, the scam at PNB stood like a huge demon (Raghavan, 2018).

Through this paper, our aim would be of comprehensive analysis of the PNB scam. Through this analysis, we will see various internal as well as external factors causing this scam. The technical concepts related to scam will be analyzed and the reasons behind the conversion to scam will be found out.

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2. Focused Literature Review:

Indian banking system has already been hampered with growth in NPAs (Assocham, 2014) (Saraswat & Srivastava, 2018) Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India, K.C. Chakrabarty noted in his speech that according to the number of frauds, private & foreign banks are at the top, but according to amount of money lost, public sector banks are the top rankers. (Chakrabarty, 2013)

RBI further, for classification of frauds chose 2 parameters- types, provisions of the Indian penal code and reporting guidelines set by RBI. For monitoring & preventive action for the banks internal process as well as audit, a circular was issued by RBI (RBI, 2015) to the banks to set up a committee to plan preventive action with the implementation of that action.

The 2008 recession had severe impact on banking system globally but at that time depositors were not rushing to withdraw deposits. In this PNB case, exactly opposite was happening.

The committee under the chairmanship of P.J. Nayak reported the findings that contain the asset quality stress and marginal capitalization faced by PSBs and suggested necessary recommendations. The autonomy was given to PSB was more as compared to the earlier in raising funds from the market as well as good governance practices were also recommended by RBI. (Nayak, 2014)

Before these decisions, the apex bank had strict regulations regarding fund raising, but further it made changes in the regulations and kept itself strict on the working principles of banks. Basic principles (Gandhi, 2014)in preventing fraud, there is need to know customer, partners & the most important employees as fault of PNB employees only caused this mishap. He also found out the importance of appraisal mechanism but at the same time concurrent monitoring.

The credibility of senior manager needs to be the point of focus. The accurate track of the activities done by each employee of the bank. The accountability of the senior managers should be on high priority of the scrutiny. (Pandya, 2018)

Lack of scrutiny, auditing, regular checking the transactions were some of the major reasons behind this fraud. (Dora, Hanumantu, & Worlikar)

The individual depositor has trust because of which he deposits money in the bank. Keeping the same thing in mind bank must have transparency towards its work. The fraud happening hampers the trust of the common man and only some big businessman enjoy by having loans & guarantees. (Verma & Ravi)

Loose strategies, improper risk management practices, fraudulent practices led to this crisis.

We would like to find out answers to following questions:

i. How the PNB scam took place? ii. Why one of the banking processes (issuing LOU) got converted to scam? iii. What was the impact of scam?

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3. Analysis of Data & Discussion

PNB filed the complaint on 29th Jan 2018 with CBI telling the fraudulent transaction with Nirav Modi’s firm along-with related bank official.Further, on 04th Feb 2018, CBI issued lookout notice against Nirav Modi. PNB informed stock exchanges on 05th Feb 2018 regarding the fraud and its magnitudewhich is $ 1.77 billion on 14th Feb 2018. (Gayathri & Mangaiyarkarasi, 2018)The fraudulent transactions were “for the benefit of a few select account holders” The note had not mentioned the name of the Fugitive Diamond merchant but media found out the name and the place which was the Mumbai branch of PNB where the branch had allegedly issued LOUs for raising the buyer’s credit for this diamond trader (Bandopadhyay, 2018) The fraudulent transactions or LOU issuance had been taken place at Mid Corporate Branch Brady House, Mumbai. (Krishna, 2018) (PTI, 2019)

3.1 PNB scam:

PNB employees (54 officials) issued the fake Letter of Undertakings (LOU) which could lead to fund NOSTRO account of PNB by the Axis and Allahabad bank (Hongkong branches). Where this NOSTRO account of PNB could fund to overseas parties including that of Nirav Modi. (Roy , Kalra, & Rocha, 2018) The two employees of PNB directly used SWIFT and while doing it, they did not pay attention on the core banking system (CBS).The FIR contained the details like those two PNB employees were issuing LOUs in unauthorized way from last 7 years. Afterwards, one of them retired and the new employee came on his designation. In January, when the officials of firm demanded fresh LOUs from PNB, the new PNB officer asked for the collateral security. The officials of firm mentioned that this had been never askedby the PNB manager in the last 7 years. Now the bank got signal that something wrong has been taken place.The new Bank officer got doubt on the past 7 years LOU issuance and he looked into the concerned matter in detail. After detail investigation, it found near about 100 LOUs issued to these firms without asking for collateral security. PNB became the victim of the fraud. It faced the problem amounting to about 11,400 crores. The PNB reported to the RBI and CBI.

Modi needed money to import pearls & diamonds. He wanted to have foreign currency loan and his earning through exporting was in foreign currency. The most important thing is that he wanted to borrow without his loan account. Hence, he arranged LOU from the PNB to get cheap buyer’s credit in foreign currency, which is for a short term.

Ideally, Modi should have exported the pearls, diamonds & use the earnings for settling the due amount of LOU as & when demanded by the bank according to its standard procedure. Further, PNB need to have paid back the loan it has raised in its NOSTRO account from the overseas banks. But he utilized the money for other purposes without paying it to the bank. These activities were happening from last 7 years. Rather Modi used to pay back the principal & interest on old LOU by new one. The total LoUs taken by Nirav Modi & Mehul Choksi stood out at 293 according investigating agencies detail. In this way the cycle of fraud was repeating. Mr. Gopalnath Shetty, who was been working at foreign exchange department of the PNB branch in Mumbai since 31 March 2010, and his colleagues were allegedly using SWIFT system and no other

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Employees had attention on it. There was no linkage of SWIFT to CORE system. (Bandopadhyay, 2018) According to the FIR, SWIFT messages were issued to Allahabad bank and Axis Bank in Hongkong. (Krishna, 2018) Nirav Modi was a diamond jewelry designer. According to Forbes, his rank was 57th among the billionaire list of 2017. He was the Founder of chain of diamond jewelry retail stores. (Lall, 2019).

3.2 Why and how one of the banking processes got converted to scam?

LOU is the form of bank guarantee under which bank can borrow money from the bank branch of overseas Indian bank. Due to this, its customer is getting money from another Indian bank’s foreign branch in the form of buyer’s credit.

This was a case of operational risk. It was the fault of the PNB employees who wanted to make faulty procedure of issuing LOUs for their own benefit. The SWIFT had bypassed the CBS. There was no internal coordination and also no proper monitoring which resulted in operation. Majorly, the internal banking system was exposed to fraudulent activities. It is must to use the standard operating system for prompt and clean banking.

It was the responsibility of external as well as internal auditor to trace the transaction also contingent liability figure or the other question arises whether those auditors were also involved or not.Concurrent auditors whose job is of transaction verification. They couldn’t notice the case at that time was big question. Hence, all auditors like concurrent, internal and statutory were failed in finding out the problem.

Linking CBS with SWIFT wasn’t made mandatory by Reserve Bank of India. Hence, many banks until now were no linking between two. Same case happened in case of Nirav Modi. But if the company wants to take on some currency risk, it can reduce its interest rate risk. So, the company demands bank guarantee to the bank of its relation in its home-country (in this case-India)and it goes to offshore branch of another Indian bank and borrows loan at lower interest by showing those bank guarantees. For the company, it was getting cheap and prompt credit. For overseas Indian bank, it would get low risk payment by Indian guarantee issuing bank while for Indian bank, it gets fees for such issuance of LOUs.The most important factor of operational risk was that one of the employees who had got access to SWIFT was the main person behind the fraud. He used the system in wrongful way. The credit quality of the borrower is also important but, in many cases, due to trust factor on local bank, the overseas Indian banks loans provides buyer credit without much scrutiny of the credit quality of the borrower. (Dugal, 2018)

The first SWIFT message was MT799 which was delivered to the overseas branches of Indian banks. The LOU issuing bank has NOSTRO account (account in the foreign currency) with the overseas bank branch. When they got SWIFT message, they promptly deposited foreign currency amount in the NOSTRO account of PNB.

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There were no linkage or integration of SWIFT with CBS, due to which unauthorized or fraudulent messages on the SWIFT remain undetected. The problem inside PNB’s case was that these officials had not only hacked into the SWIFT but had also shared confidential SWIFT passwords with the senior managers of Nirav Modi’s company.

3.3 Impact of scam:

On stock market NIFTY and SENSEX are majorly influenced by banking sector. Due to these type of scam, investors loose confidence in investing and he doubts about the transparency of the business in the country. The overall perception of the investor towards financial sector of the country changed. Strict norms and actions by the Indian banking sector after such incidences also hamper on trade financing (How will the PNB fiasco impact the equity markets?)

This fraud impacted on the customer as the customers wanted to know the position of their deposited money while the bank was instilling confidence among them that it will be honoring its commitments. (Tiwari, 2018)

The scam had also impacted banks. Out of the 39 banks which are listed one, 34 listed bank’s share price fell between February 12 and February 15, 2018 while benchmark BSE index lost 1.2 per cent. There are five banks like Union Bank of India, SBI, UCO bank, Axis Bank, Allahabad Bank. that have been directly affected by the scam as they had offered short term buyer’s credit to PNB. (Sarkar, 2018)

Table 1: Credit Risk Exposure of Public Sector Banks Sr. No. PSBs Exposure in INR crores 1 Union Bank of India 1920 2 SBI 1360 3 UCO bank 2635 4 Axis Bank 200 5 Allahabad Bank 2400 Source-BloombergQuint, Compiled by the authors

From the Table 1, Union Bank's exposure in the fraud was Rs 1920 crores. The bank suffered a net loss in quarter 3 and its gross NPA also rose. In case of State Bank of India (SBI), Erosion in market cap was 8329 crore. From the Table 1, Bank's exposure in the scam was 1360 crore and the bank suffered a net loss-2416 crore. Axis Bank lost -3.4 % while it’s erosion in market cap was 4800 crore. From the Table 1, Bank's exposure in PNB fraud-200 crore. There were rise in Gross NPAs. Allahabad Bank lost 9.9 per cent. Erosion in market cap was at 484 crores. From the Table 1, Bank's exposure in scam- INR 2400 crores. The bank dived into a net loss 1263.79 crores. Its Gross NPA rose. (Bharadwaj, 2018). Also, the scam in Allahabad bank was due to internal employees only as they misused the SWIFT technique and never linked the transactions on SWIFT with CBS. (Upadhyay, 2018)

The fraud had its impact on Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and which was thesingle biggest investor & it lost Rs 1,400 crore over the last three trading sessions.

The fraud has severe impact on buyer credit to the SMEs as SMEs require the credit for its growth but due to banning of Letter of Undertakings (LOUs) and Letter of Comfort (LCs) and the other credit options like JETIR1907386 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 589

Letter of Credit are expensive option, the SMEs are falling short of credit because of the move by the regulator and strict autonomous opinion of the individual banks. In this way, SMEs have severe impact of the scam by the billionaire. (Our Bureau, 2018)

After the scam details were made public, the stock of the bank went down by 10%. PNB’s gross NPAs rose to18.26% of advances as on June 30, 2018 as against 13.66% in the same quarter a year ago. Net NPAs rose to 10.58% against 8.67%. By the second quarter of the fiscal (2017-18), the bad loans of the PSBs had reached INR 7.34 lakh crore (compared with the INR 1.03 lakh crore of the private sector banks) (Saraswat & Srivastava, 2018)

Also, this bank crisis had impact on the currency exchange rate as PNB scam led out to fall in the exchange rate. (Singh, Goyal, Patel, & Warrier, 2018)

To jewelry sector-The fraud has led to drop the bank finance to the jewelry sector by 10% while bank finance is the most important factor in the jewelry sector. As the small businessman in this sector are not able to get the bank credit, there is fall in the export level also. Its serious implications seen in 2019 also. (PTI, 2018), (Layak, Ghosal, & Sachitananda, 2018)

Global credit rating agencies have reviewed the ratings of PNB and the continuous updated revision of rating shows downgrading. Moody’s and Fitch have placed the Punjab National Bank under rating scrutiny.

Moody's Investors Service has put under review the foreign currency issuer rating BAA3. Moody’s in a report mentioned that the fraudulent transactions were the major reason behind downgrading the rating. (Press Trust of India, 2018) (Das, 2018) Rating by CRISIL was AAA which means the LOUs issued were with highest safety. Afterwards CRISIL revised the bank’s rating during revision of outlook on PSBs where PNB’s rating was provided as stable from negative on January 25 mentioned support from the government’s capital infusion. Rating by CARE was AA+. It has stated that SEBI guidelines need to be updated. Ratings by India Ratings was AAA and Ratings by ICRA as AA+

Hence, the rating agencies are trying to gauge the severe impact of the PNB scam and accordingly they are constantly keeping the rating watch on the bank transactions.

4. Findings &Conclusion

The collateral free SWIFT transactions were happening not for a year but since last 7 years & these transactions were unidentified. Why the SWIFT bypassed the CBS was also the question of utmost importance. The SWIFT messaging system was unmonitored. Few employees including Gopalnath Shetty in mutual agreement with the client led to such big fraud hence the honesty of these officials came under question.

It is important to investigate how the operational risk raised and the process got dirty. There was no planning in the risk management system. The system was loose. There were rise in operational risk without any identification of its gradual growth itself suggests that focus on risk management was necessary. The RBI’s JETIR1907386 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 590

© 2019 JETIR June 2019, Volume 6, Issue 6 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) role was also under question. Why did not RBI provide attention during auditing of the transactions. Where it went wrong while assessing those transaction. Later on RBI took necessary improved steps that were welcome but the fault in the past made the loss which is unforgettable & difficult to recovery.

The scam impacted the economy in adverse way. Now, there is rise in the need of taking new decisions, new reforms, autonomy to the banks but at the same time whether the banks are using that autonomy honestly or not, this watch needs to be kept by RBI.

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