The Congress on Monday said bank frauds witnessed a constant high growth under the Narendra Modi government and a staggering Rs 5 lakh crore of public money was looted in the last seven years.

Citing disclosures by the Reserve Bank of India in its latest annual report (for 2020-21), Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said: “While the RBI points to certain alarming statistics, including the impact of the failure of the Modi government in controlling the second wave of Covid-19 on the economy as well as consumer confidence, the most shocking is the continuing bank fraud. There has been a steady increase in loot, showing the government’s failure in checking frauds. While the fraud amount was Rs 19,455 crore in 2014-15, the amount for Rs 2020-21 is Rs 1.38 lakh crore.”

Recalling the national outcry over the escape of high-profile fraudsters such as Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi, who were supposed to be close to the establishment, the Congress spokesperson said: “Why has the government failed to curb the bank frauds in the last seven years? What is the government doing to recover the amount involved in these bank frauds? How much amount has been collected from these fraudsters who are weakening our banking system? Who are these people who looted the banks?”

Vallabh said that Modi promised a $5-trillion economy and ended up allowing bank frauds of Rs 5 trillion in his seven years of rule. Alleging that the government has weakened the banking system, he said: “The cases and amount of bank fraud have been on a rapid rise since 2014-15. For 2020-21, when loan moratorium was in effect till August 31, 2020, and restructuring initiatives were in effect until December 31, 2020, the fraud amount for the entire year was still Rs 1,38,422 crore.”

He added: “Even if we focus on the last three years, the average fraud amount increased from Rs 10.5 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 21.3 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 18.8 crore in 2020-21. The average fraud amount was Rs 4.2 crore in 2014-15. Hence, the average fraud amount has become four to five times bigger. The maximum amount of fraud — Rs 1,85,468 crore — was reported in 2019-20.”

Vallabh pointed out that the RBI report clearly stated that the average time lag between the date of occurrence of frauds and the date of detection was 23 months for those reported in 2020-21 and 24 months for those reported in 2019-20. This means, he explained, the government couldn’t vaguely argue that the frauds happened during the previous governments and the Modi government had to bear the cross.

“Even for large frauds greater than Rs 100 crore, the average lag (between occurrence and detection) was 57 months for 2020-21 and 63 months for 2019-20. Hence, the frauds identified in 2020-21 were committed sometime in 2018-19 and large frauds were committed sometime in 2015-16 when Modi was in power. They can’t escape responsibility now. They will have to answer how this public money was looted and who are these people,” he said.