{"id":299001,"date":"2018-06-20T12:42:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-20T07:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/?p=299001"},"modified":"2018-06-28T13:27:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T13:27:13","slug":"internal-pnb-probe-report-reveals-lapses-lead-to-2-billion-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/internal-pnb-probe-report-reveals-lapses-lead-to-2-billion-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Internal PNB probe report reveals lapses lead to $2 billion scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-299002 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/pnb-300x185.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"296\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">A 162-page internal probe report produced by PNB officials stated that the $2 billion PNB scam escaped detection because of widespread risk-control and monitoring lapses precisely by 54 employees in many areas of the bank.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;There was enough evidence to suggest failures,&#8221; the team of four senior PNB investigators said in its report. &#8220;It was observed that blatant system violations\/unethical practices\/dereliction of responsibilities led the bank to such a catastrophe.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">They further said, &#8220;One of the reasons the fraud went undetected for years was because of lapses within some of the bank&#8217;s critical areas at its New Delhi headquarters, such as its credit review and international banking units.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">PNB investigators said the bank&#8217;s international banking department and the IT division had delayed the integration work. They had also not complied with central bank advisories in 2016 calling for a comprehensive audit of SWIFT systems in use.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">PNB&#8217;s report stated, despite a massive missing paper trail, none of the senior inspection officers, who conducted 10 visits between 2010 and 2017 to the branch, reported anything adverse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Probe report zeroes in 54 officials &#8211; ranging from clerks to foreign exchange managers, and auditors to heads of regional offices, who allowed the fraud to be perpetrated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">It is incomprehensible that branch staff did not notice the fraud being committed,\u00a0 the report said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Eight officials of the total 54 are among those who have been charged by the CBI for their roles in the scam earlier also.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Bank, however, did not respond to a question about what action was taken against the 54 officials mentioned in the probe report.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">However, in April PNB bank&#8217;s CEO Sunil Mehta said, &#8220;We had suspended 21 officials and will not spare others found involved in lapses, and he also described the fraud as a &#8220;small turmoil&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 162-page internal probe report produced by PNB officials stated that the $2 billion PNB scam escaped detection because of widespread risk-control and monitoring lapses precisely by 54 employees in many areas of the bank. &#8220;There was enough evidence to suggest failures,&#8221; the team of four senior PNB investigators said in its report. &#8220;It was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":299426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[167,36],"tags":[542,543,1460],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299427,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299001\/revisions\/299427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/299426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}