The bank defaulters' list published by Newslaundry has names of defunct companies. There is also no mention of big defaulters like Winsome Diamonds, Electrotherm, Sterling Biotech and S Kumars Nationwide. Is the list an old one?
News portal Newslaundry.com has published top 10 names from what it called as Reserve Bank of India (RBI)'s defaulters' list. However, except three, rest of companies are either closed, or in the process of winding up. One company, Lloyds Steel, has been taken over by Uttam Galva group. Besides, there are many new major defaulters which are not there in this list. A businessmen who is in the know, wonders whether the list with top 10 defaulter's name is really the latest one or old one, possibly from 2002-03?
In 2014, All India Bank Employees' Association (AIBEA) released a list of 406 bank loan accounts amounting to Rs70,300 crore that have been declared bad. The bank union pointed out that the top four bad loan accounts add up to a massive Rs22,666 crore, which include Kingfisher Airlines and Winsome Diamond and Jewellery Co.
As per AIBEA list, as on 2014, Vijay Mallya-owned and now defunct Kingfisher Airlines was the biggest defaulter and owe Rs2,673 crore to public sector banks (PSBs). Mumbai-based Winsome Diamond and Jewellery Company (erstwhile Su-Raj Diamond India Ltd), with dues of Rs2,660 crore, was the second highest defaulter, followed by Electrotherm India Ltd at Rs2,211 crore. Some of the other big-ticket defaulters include, Zoom Developers Pvt Ltd (Rs1,810 crore), Sterling Biotech Ltd (Rs1,732 crore), S Kumars Nationwide Ltd (Rs1,692 crore), Surya Vinayak Industries Ltd (Rs1,446 crore), Ispat Alloys Ltd (Rs1,360 crore), Forever Precious Jewellery and Diamonds (Rs1,254 crore), Sterling Oil Resources Ltd (Rs1,197 crore) and Varun Industries Ltd (Rs1,129 crore). (Read:
AIBEA demands detailed probe of top 400 bank loan defaults)
However, except Kingfisher and Zoom Developers, none other exist in the list accessed and published by Newslaundry.
According to the list published by Newslaundry, steel and the metals and mining sector feature prominently on the list of top 10 defaulters. "Of the 10 companies, four are public sector undertakings: Hindustan Cables (Rs4,917 crore), Hindustan Photo Films (Rs3,929 crore), Prag Bosimi (Rs3,558 crore) and Malvika Steel (Rs3,057 crore), which was bought over by SAIL from Usha Group in 2009. Both Hindustan Cables and Hindustan Photo Films are declared terminally sick, and the former may shut down soon," the report says. However, only two of these are really public sector units.
The list also has names of Usha Ispat (Rs16,911 crore), Lloyds Steel (Rs9,478 crore), Prakash Industries (Rs3,665 crore), Zoom Developers (Rs3,843 crore), Cranes Software International (Rs3,580 crore) and Kingfisher (Rs3,529 crore). Many of these are non-functional today raising question on the period of defaults. Malavika Steels and Usha Ispat are long gone. Its promoter was Vinay Rai, who was close to Rajiv Gandhi and had managed to do a mega issue in 1989. Rai, a Sai Baba devotee has since turned into an educationist. His website describes himself as “A philosopher. A philanthropist. A visionary. An educationist.”
A banker too suspects that this list is an old one, mostly from before FY2005. "For example," he says, "Lloyds Steel had cleared all its dues and since then it has been taken over by Uttam Galva group in 2012 and renamed the company as Uttam Value Steels, which is a listed entity on the stock exchanges. The wilful defaults on Lloyds Steel was about Rs50 crore from Bank of India, but that also was cleared. Similarly, Prakash Industries has also cleared all its loans and non-performing assets (NPAs)."
Similar views were expressed by Prag Bosimi and Crane Software while replying to Newslaundry report. Prag Bosimi told the website, that the company was still operational, but no longer manufactures textiles. The company also stated that it has settled more than 80% of its liabilities and the rest is under settlement or payment.
"Crane Software has also said that they owe Rs649 crore to Indian banks and not Rs3,580 crore, which is the figure suggested by the list Newslaundry has accessed. Cranes asserted that the company has been affected by the global economic slowdown of 2009, but has managed to settle its loans of as much as Rs326.07 crore since then," the report says.
Using the list from Newslaundry, even
Business Standard has done extensive coverage of the issue. In a report corrected on 27 April 2016, the newspaper had stated that Prag Bosimi had been shut for three years and that it did not owe liabilities to the tune of Rs3,558 crore.
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Mahesh
The workmen directors - members of the AIBEA have at least been asking from 2012 one good thing - asking the names of defaulters to be declared! It is not known whether as directors they had put in their comments on loan sanctions by the Boards and when these loans came for restructuring under CDR to the Board again. Once their stables are clean they can certainly clean up others and Swatch Banks could emerge ere long.
Where as some thing more serious is the sleeping money of the INDIAN POLITICIANS which runs in lakhs of crores . This is the money need immediate attention. Let the Media and Govt. please do not divert the seriousness of issue. First get back the "BLACK MONEY IN PANAMA AND SWISS " majority are of the politicians.